Child Soldiers
by KuriQuinn
Summary: There are many men and women that fought in the Wars that deserved to live and to be remembered. As a result of humanity’s preoccupation with pomp and circumstance, I may be the only one that will.' ::AC195 Rewrite::
1. Forward

Child Soldiers

Author: KuriQuinn

Title: Child Soldiers

Fandom: Gundam Wing

Blanket Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, never will and have no intention of leading a crusade to try to own them. That's too much money and too much effort. However, I do like to manipulate the characters to do my bidding because it amuses me and countless others. This is the only disclaimer you will see in this fic, so if you decide to review me saying that I didn't give credit to the real person that came up with Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate) I will calmly tell you to go screw yourself. That is all

Blanket Fanfiction Disclaimer: Lilya is my own creation and since the beginning has grown with me. I hope that this version will have changed her so that she is no longer the Mary-Sue edition that I started out with and is an actual character that can be related to. Her story and background are of my creation, should you wish to use her please contact me and ask my permission before you do. Any characters that you do not recognize from the original Gundam Wing series are all mine save for Shane and Sibley (© Meg), Leigh (© Moni) and other people that will be disclaimed as they show up.

Rating: R for language, mature themes and violence

Pairing: Figure it out.

Takes-Place: Series

Summary: In a war, it is inevitable to suffer pain, sadness and destruction. To those born during a war, it's all they ever know – ideals and beliefs all become unimportant when it comes down to that one second where you decided to live or die. The life of a young woman that intermingled with five of the most important soldiers in history is explored in this in-depth historical and biographical analysis.

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_Forward_

_"Vice-Foreign Minister, Earth's Sphere President, distinguished delegates, and ladies and gentlemen: _

_Once again we meet after a year of tumultuous violence and insubordinations of those who would shatter this delicate peace, that was brought to us through the blood and loss of millions of our people. Despite every year where we remember those lost senselessly in battle, we continue to fight both politically and militarily. No country is exempt from this truth, and I believe that it is one that should be dealt with swiftly if we hope to live in harmony._

_Every delegate gathered here either lived through or grew up in the wake of the Colonial Wars, which begs the question why they would allow their countries and their people to try to disrupt the terms of the Treaty of the Eve Wars. Although all out war between the earth and the colonies has not taken place in almost fifty years, there have been those factions that have tried to undo the peace settlements many times over._

_For those of you that do not wish to heed my words or can not imagine the total devastation caused by another Earth-Colonial war, let me tell you this. It is your children that will suffer. Even now as we speak, in some parts of Earth and on many undeveloped colonies where revolution is every day life, children as young as the age of four are running about toting weapons that can kill dozens of people at a time. They are forced by their own families and own armies to fight and kill, because they are seen as expendable. In most cases, they are given a month's worth of training and expected to fight to the death – the lucky ones die within their first days of combat. _

_I find importance in this issue not merely because of its severity and because I'm trying to be the humanitarian – but having been a child soldier myself and somehow surviving, I ask you as fellow human beings to listen. I know that war is something that will exist as long as humanity lives on earth or in the colonies and if we manage to make it past our solar system, war will exist there. I know that people will die and there's no way to end violence and live in peace forever. But there is a way to make war something that does not cost to many lives._

_The Declaration of Child Warfare Immunity is an act that should be passed to ensure the safety of future generations. On either side of a battle, how do you win when the next generation has died to bring you your victory? To keep children under the age of twelve from warfare, whether it be part of a violent rebellion or an official intercontinental or colonial war, is something we must all ascribe to. Not only will we keep our children safe, but will decrease the ranks of any militia by ten percent. Less numbers could very well give way to shorter wars and battles. _

_I believe this Law holds the same importance as the Act Banishing Nuclear and Mobile Weaponry passed by the former Vice Minister and Queen Relena Peacecraft. In signing it, you bring about a better future for all of us and our children . . ."_

_- Earth Sphere Unified Nations Peace Conference Exerpt  
Colonial Minister Rebekka Adler addressing the issue of Child Soldiers  
September 25, AC 240_

(-)

I met the Colonial Minister in August of 199 AC during a conference at the Sanc kingdom. She just been elected as the first Colonial Minister, a great success considering no one knew anything about where she had come from or what she had been doing during the war. The press was constantly trying to implicate her for something in a hope that she would let something slip, but she never did.

At the time I was working as the official biographer of Her Highness Queen Relena, although by then she had renounced her title and merely acted as Vice Foreign Minister Darlian.

The conference members were all people of high interest – Quatre Raberba Winner, head of the Winner Corporation who had just made a deal to compensate a former Mobile Suit production company for their losses in the understanding that they would no longer produce weapons. Dorothy Catalonia, heiress to the former Romefellar foundation and known opponent of Relena Peacecraft. Mariemeia Khushrhenada, daughter of the late Treize and political ally of Relena Peacecraft.

Not to mention the countless Preventor agents that lined the room in case of danger and to the great annoyance of Her Highness.

I noticed that through the course of the night the Colonial Minister gravitated towards the same few individuals, which included Mr. Winner, a particularly long haired young man and three stern looking Preventor agents. I only realized that she obviously had a friendship to these people when the night was over.

I followed her career with great interest over the next few years, amazed at the fact that despite her advocating of peace there were moments when she seemed to want nothing more than to dive into a non-pacifistic solution. Almost like the irritating press that followed her around, I tried to find out everything I could about this woman and her liaisons with the guests that had been at the Sanc kingdom conference. The only thing I could ever come up with was that she had had a quiet life and was the illegitimate daughter of the late Tobias Dutchner, who had apparently partaken in numerous war-crimes.

Many times I offered her my services as a biographer, twice I even conceded to do it for free just for the chance to hear her story. Each time she declined or laughed jokingly. It wasn't until the death of Her Highness Queen Relena in AC 239 that she suddenly decided it was time for the world to know. It was a year before she actually sat down with me to start on the reconstruction of her past; as I understand it she was travelling around the globe and the colonies to speak with old friends and probably ask their permission to publish their experiences in the war.

When she finally began to speak, within the first day I felt overwhelmed by her words and had to listen to my voice recorder many times over that same night just to make sure what she had told me was correct. During the coming months I half-expected her to tell me that the deal was off considering how many times she was absent throughout the year. There was also always the fear of her death. She was nearly sixty and from what I could discern from frequent medical tests, getting frailer because of something to do with her childhood.

The book was finally finished in AC 243, two years before the Colonial Minister passed away. During the writing of the book I got the feeling that she was afraid that the book would hurt her political career but had resigned herself to the truth. Instead, the response was a great wave of support for her and her ideals – there were even a few new research centers opened on certain colonies for the study of what she had called 'Newtypes' in her books.

The four years spent writing the book and entering the mind frame of Rebekka Adler, who during the war had been a soldier by the name of Lilya Hollander, were an adventure where I learned the depths of evil and corruption that the war had brought forth.

The book is written in her words with not one word changed from her original telling. In the writing down of her account, hundreds of lives have been changed to date and new information regarding the Earth-Colony wars has come to surface.

_Seraphim O'Rinn  
__Biographer and Friend_

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This is an experiment of mine – I hope you enjoy it. Check out my homepage (located on the bio page of for information regarding my fic updates and the direction in which this fic is going. If you don't...well, it's your funeral and I won't be answering questions unless they're posed on my homepage. 

KuriQuinn


	2. Chapter One

_**Child Soldiers**  
by KuriQuinn _

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Chapter One: The Prototype

_(September 28th, AC 180 – January 30th, AC 190)_

The utter uselessness of war lies in the amount of lives that are lost. Countless names, forgotten in the flames and explosions disappear from people's memories and from the historical records, whether important or not. Unless you make a name for yourself as a hero or die needlessly or as a martyr you're not worth being remembered in the records. In history it is the most superficial that is remembered. The ones who do the stupid stunts and by some fluke of Fate actually manage to survive it are regaled as heroes while those that fought tirelessly, every waking moment of their lives or careers in battle perish without their comrades even noticing. You become just another corpse to be buried and are only remembered as 'that great uncle that died in the Siege of So and so…'.

It's not a very comforting thought, although it does make sense as to why my name was left off of the record. Actually, I should be thankful that it was considering the circumstances. Still, there are many men and women that fought in the Wars that deserved not only to live, but to have been remembered. As a result of humanity's preoccupation with pomp and circumstance, I may very well be the only one that will ever remember them.

The era I grew up in was one where the rights and freedoms that had been fought for by countless soldiers before the After Colony days had become obsolete. Men and women held equality only on the battlefield, no where else – anywhere else, females were below anyone. In my childhood, there was no such thing. You were not considered a person until the age of twenty-five, because by then you had been through enough of life to be considered an elder. You had earned the respect to have rights. Until then, you were considered a child or an object. In my case, I was an object.

I suppose the prudent thing to do in telling my story would be to start at the beginning – which like in most biographies begins long before I was born. The beginning is as much my parent's story as it is mine.

The Dutchner family can trace its roots back not only past the After Colony Years but nearly to the Second World War of the twentieth century. A noble and well-to-do military family of the German states, they were one of the first pioneering families on the colonies. As I understand it, many mercenaries during the Wars came from my father's family. During the tumultuous wars after the assassination of Heero Yuy, my family began to rub shoulders with the Romafeller Foundation and supplied much weaponry and manpower to the OZ organization.

My mother's history is simple but vague. She was a prostitute from L2, the notorious drug-trafficking colonies, who got involved with the wrong people. I don't know anything about her except that her name was Kaori Adler, which could just have been a name she gave herself. When she was twelve she was raped and her family threw her out for shaming them. A child resulted from this, but the boy was taken from her a year later and she never saw him again. It was in her search for the baby she'd named Gabriel that took her to my father, who was stationed on L2 with the Alliance militia. He lied to her saying that he could help her but it was just a ploy to sleep with her.

My mother didn't realize she was pregnant until she was six-months along – it was hard to tell because of the lack of true diet and the fact that the drugs she took made her so sick she couldn't distinguish morning sickness from the side-effects from the drugs. Almost around the same time that she discovered my existence, underlings from the Dutchner family arrived and stole her away to colony 06259 of the L3 cluster. She was a dirty secret that had to be eradicated. My father, the loving father of three healthy children and the poster boy for the family, could not be linked with such a shame as relationships beyond marriage.

It was at that time that trained soldiers became very much in demand – OZ needed highly trained armed forces that would ask no questions and operate to the fullest level. It was my grandfather who suggested that they experiment with children from birth. It was my father that volunteered me – after all, I was the expendable daughter of a whore. He never saw me as his child but as a blemish to his good name.

When I was born on September 28th, in the year 182 of the After Colony calendar – the same year that the Sanc Kingdom was attacked and King Peacecraft died – my mother was almost sixteen. The only record of my birth is on a coffee-stained scrap of paper kept by my mother. She managed to jot it down before she was drugged, strapped to a gurney and induced three weeks before her expected date. She never even got to hold me before I was stolen away from the delivery room and put in a special facility.

The three weeks following my birth, the Dutchner family deliberated about whether they should let her live or not; drugging her to keep her from noticing my absence and injecting me with so many chemicals and formulas I'm amazed that I lived to see my first month. The first of the injections were to make me immune to the infantile diseases that ravaged the colony and accounted for forty-six percent of infant death. The rest were experimental treatment to alter my growth patterns and stimulate brain activity.

Around this time, the scientists discovered that I had a rare gene one that they hadn't seen before. At first they believed it to be a birth defect but on further study they discovered it to be a rather interesting ability enhancing gene. After a few tests it turned out my mother was the carrier – and she was allowed to live, cloistered somewhere in the facility in case they needed more tests or another test subject.

I was under observation for a year before they finally discovered what the gene did – I was enabled with an absolute eidetic memory. In short, I was granted the ability to learn anything I wanted to, recall every event that I remembered having taken place and operated with the swift efficiency of an expert. Further study showed that I used two percent more of my brain than the average human being.

As of today's superior researching methods and scientific study, different branches of what my father christened as the New Type gene have been discerned throughout the Sphere. The basics of its function is that it adds an extra chromosome that instead of inducing the disease known as Down's syndrome creates certain irregularities and improvements in the cells of the body. There are different branches of the Newtype, each causing different side effects depending on the carrier of the gene and the blood-type of the host.

New Type A-Positive, the branch that I have, is transmitted through the mother, who although a carrier, is not a New Type. New Type A-Negative is the branch that is also transmitted through the mother, who is a Newtype, which makes the gene stronger in the child. Newtype B-Positive is a paternal branch where the father is merely a carrier and Newtype C-Positive is the paternal branch where the father is also a Newtype. Newtype M-Positive is where both parents are carriers, but the most possibly dangerous branch of Newtype is Newtype M, where both parents are Newtypes. Of course, after all these different degrees of the disease, the blood types add to the strength of the gene. A Newtype A-positive with the blood type O-negative, like me, has a gene just as strong as a Newtype M-positive with blood type AB-negative.

The discovery of this mutation increased the stakes of the Dutchner family's decision. I was no longer a defective body to be used as an experiment to create the perfect soldier but an intelligent, dynamic prototype to a brand of warrior that they could use to boost their power. Their end goal was to create a soldier that was able to adapt and learn to overcome any task put before him – the subject would be male of course. My father did not accept women who were soldiers and the only reason I was used in the tests was that I was the one with the gene. He wanted to know how he could integrate the gene into the male body, but first I had to withstand the tests and simulations put before me.

In effect, once I had completed all of the desired testing as an experiment, he would present me to his superiors and ask for a grant to create a superior soldier race for the armies, but to do so, he would need the grants from the government to us clone technologies, which were taboo at the time. It was essential that I was able to convince the superiors of the effectiveness of Dutchner training and the Newtype gene. After that, I guess I would probably have been used to breed more Newtypes down the line.

Because my mother was a carrier and it was known that she had had child before me, it was a project of a division of the Dutchner to track down the boy if he was still alive and hopefully find out if he carried the gene. This little scheme yielded little results, although as I heard it they found two other children that carried a similar gene.

Because humans are able to make more connections and acquire more knowledge between the ages of two and nine, I was forced to begin my training as soon as I could walk. I was not just subjected to rigorous training, but many tests in order to find out how to re-create the gene. My father wanted all of his soldiers to have my gift.

The scientists were intent that despite my knowledge I would not be able to figure out the logic behind my existence or ask questions. Although I was educated with the basics of reading and writing this was my only schooling. They didn't bother to teach me any more than they needed me to know – I never learned of my rights or of the history or of other people. Instead I learned the correct manner to fire a gun, proper self defense, martial arts, hacking and geographic coordination. Everything I ever did made no sense to me but was done with perfect accuracy. Even today without thinking I can perform a task without knowing what or why I am doing it. I was taught to do, never to think. I learned to converse in several different languages, the sports other children my age knew, how to forge enough money to get by... It was also in this time that my father became determined to train me for murder.

He decided that it was time for me to learn how to kill without emotion clouding the issue. He had a bunch of serial killers brought in for my practice, telling me that what I was doing was right: I was killing off the evil of our society.

I followed orders. I did what I was told, when I was told, all to avoid the fists I knew would come at me if I didn't. It's amazing, that even though I was learning how to fight back against assault, it never occurred to me to fight back against my father or his henchmen when they beat me. In fact, I didn't know he was my father until overhearing one of the scientists outside of my cell.

My mother was never a problem in my life. That is to say, she never interfered with my father's plans because he had her locked away in his hospital, constantly drugging her with unnatural amounts of dope and morphine to keep her from knowing what was going on. The colonial doctors didn't say anything about it. They worked for my father and as long as he kept their pockets full they turned a blind eye to it all.

The first and only time that I met my mother, I didn't know who she was. My father had taken me along on one of his rare visits to the colony hospital, to receive the results of the last week's tests and probably to lock me in for new ones. While he conversed with the scientists, I caught sight of an open room where a lone woman lay in bed.

She held the semblance of a girl that had once been beautiful but had gone to seed over many years of weariness. When I approached her, I knew that she was very sick and possibly dying. She was suffering and although at the time she was only twenty, she looked as though she was in her late forties. Her eyes were sad, hurt, disappointed and almost dead. The red hair that I had inherited fell limply across her violet eyes, already graying. I have green eyes like my father. I felt for this woman so much, and was so surprised when she looked up at me with glazed eyes and smiled uncomprehendingly.

"Look, it's the baby," she mumbled, reaching out to me. I didn't shrink away when her thin arms grasped towards me and brushed my hair away from my face. Something told me this woman should mean something to me. "The baby Rebekka…Rebekka at the well, like in the story…I know it must be scary to see Mommy like this, but I'll get out soon…maybe when the dragon leaves the castle…"

I remember staring blankly.

"…Gotta get away from the monster…had enough…" she was mumbling in a crazed way, looking at me as though it just dawned on her who I was and that she wasn't alone. "Want you out…have to find your brother, baby, your big brother Gabriel…he was so beautiful…never got sick and I could take him anywhere…stolen from under my nose," she was crying and holding onto me more tightly now and I instantly tried moving back, moving away. She told me the story of my brother in her crazed way, and I still pulled away, her words scaring me…but striking something deep within at the same time.

"If you don't come out here right now, you little maggot, you'll be sorry…"

"Get off this colony…get off this colony!" she kept repeating the words over and over in a hissing voice, her eyes wild and crazed. She quieted suddenly and I felt a heavy hand slap down on my shoulder, making my legs tremble.

"So, you found your mom, did you kid?" Her face trembled now that he had spoken. "Well, I guess you're still young enough to want to see her, but I wouldn't put too much stock into what she jabbers about. She's high twenty-four-seven, kid. Doesn't even know what she saying."

"The monster…monster," she shrieked, becoming hysterical. The last thing I saw was her being attended to by several medics, the flash of a needle, before my father dragged me roughly out of the building.

"Find Gabriel! Find Gabriel!" she was shrieking down the halls, before the door slammed and her cries were muffled both by the steel and the hand of an orderly.

Maybe it was decreed somewhere by Fate or Fortune that my mother's will would happen, or maybe it had been planned for since my birth. All I remember of that day is training to the point of falling down in exhaustion and being roughly thrown back in my cell. After that all I remember hearing were voices swimming around me as I slept and awaking to a darkness that was not the familiar choking void of my cell.

There was someone beside me, breathing hard – his stress levels were evident and I could almost sense the desperation. It took me a few moments to realize I was no longer in my cell but lying limply in the corner of what looked like a ventilation shaft. There were a few blankets tossed over me carelessly and as soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I realized I was in the company of one of the scientists that usually administered my medications.

I didn't ask anything, accustomed to unexplained occurrences and chocking it up as training. What I didn't know at that time was that this man was a traitor to the Dutchner association, intent on selling me to a rebel faction for his personal means. From what I've pieced together, Tobias didn't discover I was gone until five that morning when he wanted to start my training.

When the scientist saw that I was awake he took a syringe out of his case, tapped it and then injected me with a tranquilizer that put me to sleep for another eight hours. I awoke a second time, this time in an alleyway somewhere, completely alone and confused. The man was gone and the blankets I had been wrapped in had disappeared. Probably stolen. I figured I should wait for the scientist or someone to come and get me, but obviously no one knew where I was. The man had probably left for a moment and been caught by Dutchner family officials, but I didn't know this at the time.

It was about three hours before I realized that whoever he was, wasn't coming back and I actually began to walk around. I didn't know anything about what was going on – my knowledge of colonies and society was limited to baldest facts which didn't give me much to go on. As I walked through the streets of the colony I tried to piece together what was going on – for the first few days I really believed it was a training exercise. No one remarked to my presence considering how many other street rats swarmed the streets. I blended in with the homeless quite well considering all I had ever had to wear were rags.

I spent almost a month on V08744, the colony which I learned was part of the L2 colony cluster. I don't remember anything of my experience there before meeting the Sweepers – so named because they tended to sweep the pockets of unsuspecting sleeping homeless or even corpses in the street. It was April and I had been there nearly two weeks, stealing food when I needed to and wandering around in the back streets like a ghost. It's probably for this reason that it took so long for my father's henchmen to find me.

This may have seemed intelligent, but I was actually not sure if it was safer to walk out in the open. The side streets were rampant with thieves, pick-pockets, cut-throats and pimps; prostitutes and drug dealers lined the sides. Mostly at night anyway. During the day, it was mostly the begging kids you saw.

They found me sleeping in a dumpster – they had jumped inside to hide from a group of pursuers, waking me from my hesitant sleep. Before I could cry out one of them had slapped a grimy hand over my mouth to keep me quiet. Needless to say my training kicked in and within moments I had the boy in a chokehold, whining painfully. The two other boys with him coaxed my hands from around his neck somehow and the next thing I knew the four of us were on the street.

"What the hell's your problem?" the boy I had practically attacked snarled at me. I remember him the best out of all of them because of the angry, cobalt violet eyes and long tangled hair. He looked so much like a girl but his voice gave him away. I thought he must have been about two years older than me and by the look of it, wanted to beat me into the ground. Luckily for both of us, the tallest of the boys held him back – he was a big, blond brute with a rash up one side of his face.

"What'd I tell ya?" he demanded, glaring down at the longhaired boy.

"But Solo – !"

"Shut up already!"

The boy stopped struggling, but continued to glare my way as though his being in trouble was all my fault. I guess it sort of was.

"You ain't from around here?" the third boy asked. He was small with mousy hair.

I didn't answer, not sure if I was supposed to or if I was, what I should say. They glared down at me expectantly and I remember opening my mouth and quietly affirming, "No."

My voice when I was little was much quieter, full of hesitation and doubt. This was to be expected though, considering I was not allowed to talk during my training and the use of my voice had been pretty much been void since I was born.

The blond one, Solo, snorted and nodded. "Figured – yer a newbie. Too damned polite, it just gives you away."

I remained silent, waiting for the judgment and half expecting them to try and attack me again.

"Yer parents die or sumthin?" Solo questioned, looking down at me shrewdly, his blue eyes unnerving me. There was something strange that lit inside those two pale irises that made me shiver and compelled me to answer. I shook my head. "Oh, an abandoned one then –" I blinked. "You got a place to stay – other than this?"

He gestured around at the dumpster that the four of us were still sitting in, the smell almost overwhelming me. I could only shake my head in response.

"Right – come with us," he said decisively.

"But Solo – " the longhaired boy whined, looking at me with resentful eyes. "That's another mouth ta feed, we ain't got enough – "

"What did I tell ya, Kid?" Solo asked contemptibly, looking down his nose at the younger boy. "You has to take care of these types – no one else will."

"But – !"

"No one's gonna take yer shit from you," Solo grumbled, looking over at me. The corner of his mouth tugged upwards ruefully, almost as though what he was about to say would be unpleasant. "Will ya? You got a handle?"

Again I was silent, searching through my mind. I recalled the name that the strange woman that was my mother had called me, but for some reason I couldn't connect this name to myself. I had never really had a name to begin with. When I remained silent for another few minutes Kid started to make fun of me, while Solo put a hand over his mouth and nodded at me. "T'sokay, none of us got 'em ta begin wit. I'll give ya one."

I blinked.

"I got it," Kid spoke up. "How's about Squirt?"

I glowered in his direction, but Solo laughed. "It fits," he chuckled. He caught my expression and his face softened. "Don'tcha mind Kid. He's just jealous."

I watched, open-mouthed as Solo leaned forward and kissed Kid full on the mouth. Quick was obviously used to this, because he just began to make his way out of the dumpster and wait expectantly for us to come with him. Later on, I too learned to just ignore Solo's spontaneous bursts of affections towards Kid. I learned at this young age that it really didn't matter in the big scheme of things.

What I first found strange about the Sweepers was that they asked no questions; there was no interrogation or test that I had to pass to stay with them. They never asked me more than Solo had, as though my background didn't matter which – understandably – it didn't to them. The second strangest thing about the Sweepers was that there were no adults around. The complete and utter freedom these street kids had confused me and once I had lived with them for three days I finally understood that I was out of the Dutchner family's clutches and out in the so-called "real world".

They lived in a junkyard, surrounding a slowly decaying structure that was little more than roof with three good walls. When the manufactured wind blew from the south side where there was a missing wall it was like sleeping in the Earth's Arctic. The Sweepers had erected piles of junk and appliances on that side to dull the force of the wind, but it was never the same as actually having a complete wall. Solo told me that the worst weather was when the colony's rain generator was broken and the dust piled up everywhere.

Without any questions he told me that he was about eleven and a runaway. He had left his drunkard father and prostitute of a mother at the age of seven and became the leader of a group of kids, most of whom had died of hunger or diseases before he formed the one that I was a part of.

Kid was the first one that he'd helped – on the streets for as long as he could remember, Solo had found him moments away from being raped by a group of drug-dealers from whom he had tried to steal. At seven, Kid was a brat, always afraid that someone was going to take from him and although he worried about the others occasionally, he was always looking out for himself more than anyone else. He had never had anyone closer than Solo, whom I could see he cared about very much. We all cared about Solo. He was the closest thing to a guardian that we had at the time.

At first I spent all of my time with Tiny, a girl who was a year younger than me and painfully shy. We got on well because we never spoke but kept each other's company. Her older brother was Quick, the boy that had been with Solo and Kid when they found me. They had been left on the street because their parents couldn't afford to look after them anymore.

Smarts, a tall boy with curly auburn hair and gray eyes, was also one of the quiet ones. He merely smiled when I met him, and Solo told me his story. His family had died in a fire caused by the Alliance and he had been the only survivor. Solo had taken him in, like the others. He was eight.

Birdy was the last and most talkative. She was six, and the Sweeper kids had found her hiding in a garbage can. She couldn't remember anything of the first few years of her life, which probably had something to do with the unsightly scare on the back of her head. According to Solo it had been bleeding and infected when he had first found her.

With the gang, I learned what I needed to survive – what I had never been taught in the facility. I was taught to run and if I must, talk my way out of it. I made more of headway in two weeks than in the first five years of my life. By the end of my stay with the Sweepers, I was actually speaking like a normal person and had developed an attitude to boot. I've always attributed this metamorphosis back to my training – the purpose of my training in the facility had been to adapt and I proved it effective by becoming a more-than-convincing street urchin.

I learned that I was very capable at talking my way out of things, and it has always been one of my most used abilities, along with theft. The Sweepers taught me the signs to look for to be able to tell whether a place was safe or not, and how to lie without showing it on my face.

The Sweepers had a habit of doubling up to avoid the cold during the nights. Quick and Tiny were cuddled together in the corner of the run-down room, Birdy and Smarts doubled up, and Solo and Kid slept soundly by the door. I was always alone. I hated the nights. It wasn't that I was afraid of the dark, like normal kids my age would be, but I was cold and slowly beginning to understand what it meant to be alone.

I stayed with the Sweeper kids for another week. One wonderful, free week where I made friends with other groups and learned the best places to snatch things from. Every cent or credit I managed to steal I divided between what I would give to the others and what I would keep for myself.

After our initial dislike of each other, Kid and I became extremely close. Almost like siblings, even though he always put Solo first. We did everything together. He even snuck me in to see my first movie. I don't remember what it was about. All I remember was thinking how wonderful it suddenly felt to be normal. Even though I never forgot the training, what my life had been like and many times expected someone to come and tell me that this exercise was over, I slowly began to develop of wish to remain in this environment of freedom. Regardless of the poverty I lived in, I was happy.

My new life was shattered one day while I was out scrounging for food. Since my disappearance and the knowledge that I had probably been taken to L2, the Dutchner family had financed certain bounty hunters to search me out and return me to my home. I made the mistake of going into the high streets one day and literally ran into one of them.

The brute nearly had me drugged and bound, ready to be returned to my prison of a home before some part of my brain focused on what the Sweepers had taught me first and foremost: when in trouble, run. The man obviously thought I would go quietly, considering how brainwashed I had been – it was a mistake on his part. The minute I saw an opening, I took it, snatching his knife and swiping over whatever exposed flesh I could find.

I remember running as fast as possible, the echoes of his anguished yells following me. I don't know where I was headed or how long I ran, but when I finally stopped I was farther away from the Sweepers territory than I had ever been. Everything was foreign to me. At first I wanted to go back to them and try to forget the incident had ever happened, but suddenly I began to think about what would happen if the people who were after me came upon them. I would be taken and they would probably be punished for harboring me, even if they were children.

For the first time I consciously made the decision to leave where I was and try to disappear. Maybe if I laid low long enough the Dutchner family would forget about me. It was easier said than done, of course, considering how little I knew about the world. My knowledge was limited to street life and combat training – I wasn't so stupid as not to know that this was not how the world was supposed to work.

My belief that the Dutchners would forget about me was completely wrong. AC 187 was a tumultuous year. Around the same time as my escape from the bounty hunter, the Dutchner family managed to gain control of the weapons manufacture of OZ. They formed a coalition known as the Dutchner Association, strengthening its ties by placing family members at the head of both the DA and OZ and dabbling in political marriages. At the head of the DA, after his father finally passed away, was Tobias Dutchner.

My father's feelings towards me had not changed any in my absence and with his new appointment as head of the DA he strengthened his resolve to find me. Posters and vid-segments were shipped to every colony warning them about me. I was the most sought after fugitive in AC 187 but somehow, never found.

After L2, I disappeared for good, hopping from colony to colony, always one step ahead of my pursuers. Three short weeks had been enough to change my life and make me relish in the freedom I had from the routines, injections and training. Now there was a price to pay to keep it and that was to run. The memory of how I had been happy for a short time with the Sweepers made me never want to return to a life of confinement. I was desperate to stay free.

As I lived on the run, learning everything as I went and miraculously remembering everything thanks to my eidetic memory, I developed certain other personality quirks – or as my closest friends call them these days, defects. I started to resent the rest of humanity, especially when I saw normal children so full of happiness and the families they were surrounded by. I became a violent and attitude-filled child, in a sense biting whatever hand fed me. The longer I was alone, the more a daredevil I became. I became cocky many time over the years, nearly getting caught many times just to taunt my would-be-captors. Each time I escaped I resolved to be more careful, but with all of the solitude the need to stir up trouble always returned.

Although I spent time on the colonies that I've learned many of my comrades grew up on, the only one that I truly had any contact with was the violet-eyed boy from L2. I lived on the streets the way the Sweepers had taught me, and took odd jobs where people needed me, although I disappeared about two weeks after being there. Child labor was not uncommon during those hard war times, and instead of being surprised that people accepted me to work for them, I was surprised that they were so kind about it. I was never paid, but given a roof over my head and food to eat. It was only in the later years I began to feel some guilt to using these poor people for my own needs, but this feeling was stamped out by the fact that my father was still trying to capture me.

The first time I was truly close to being caught was a year after my escape on a Chinese colony called A0206, which was in the L5 colony cluster until recently when it was destroyed. I was working as an errand girl for a baker, and although I didn't know a word of Chinese, I managed to understand what was needed. The man took me in because I was quiet, asked no questions when the secret deliveries were dropped off of the trucks at the back of the house and could be left alone. Six months, though, didn't seem to be enough to establish trust. Mā Xun found a new poster with my name and information on it. I guess he really needed the money, because he told the authorities where I was.

When two of them cornered me in the alley in back of the bakery, I had to run again.

After that it was infrequent times when the DA caught up to me, and I managed to elude them each time, albeit narrowly. They actually had me in custody and on a transport back home once when I was seven, but I managed to jump out of the air pocket during the take-off and disappear into the streets of L4.

In every spaceport, on every transport, the reminder to run echoed loudly and when I slept, it was like an iron brand in my eyes, searing and bright. I didn't understand anything, my reasons or others. I didn't understand why I didn't just give up or why they didn't. Now it is easier to fathom why they didn't give up on me: I was the only child they knew of with such a developed Newtype gene which made me an irreplaceable, valuable asset. It may also have had something to do with the fact that because I was technically his own daughter and a test subject, that he didn't want any of the government, especially the Alliance, to find out what he had been up to.

It was in AC 190, when I was eight years old, that I chose the name that stayed with me throughout the war years and a little beyond. It wasn't an earth shattering or memorable decision. I hadn't gone by a name since L2 with the Sweepers. I've heard that a name reflects the person and who they are. I wish I could say it was the same for me, but in truth, I merely chose my name out of convenience and ease – I met a girl in one of the homeless shelter's whose name was Lilya; Hollander was the name of the company that manufactured the transports that I usually stowed away in. It seemed fitting to take their name as my own, considering the inside of a transport was more my home than any colony I'd ever inhabited.

Around the same time I chose my name I was finally captured, though it was not by the DA.

Driven to the L1 colony cluster both to find more work and keep away from those who hunted me, I never thought that I would be captured so easily. The colonies of L1 were slightly better off than the others I had been to. They were mostly run by the Asian populace of earth and thus for the most part, key trading colonies that were immersed in business and the majority of political matters. Two years prior to my arrival the government of L1 had been extremely involved with an uprising on a colony that hadn't yet been completed: X-18999 of the L3 cluster, relatively close to my birthplace. Many people had died both from that colony as well as from L1.

Searching around for food on the L1 colony where I landed proved to be harder than I thought considering how immaculately clean and up-kept the place was. There were hardly any people to beg from or dumpsters to search for food. I managed to steal what I could but it seemed I would starve before finding a place to stay.

I found myself in the corporate part of the colony before long, having wandered away from the residencies. I knew that the Alliance had camps on the colony and there was always the possibility of food from their scraps. The only danger was that I was wanted by the Alliance considering their affiliations with OZ, whether they knew it or not. If I was caught there, it would not be easy to escape.

Of course I was saved this decision when I was hit from behind with a tranquilizer dart and spent the next eight hours unconscious. When I awoke I was lying in the middle of a large room, almost the size of an arena or air hanger. I was alone. Or at least, I was until I got my bearings.

Almost the second that I was able to stand and move without wincing, I was attacked from behind, a pair of strong arms holding me in a chokehold and wrestling me to ground. It took a second or so before my memory latched onto my training from so long ago, guiding my movements as I jutted my elbow into my attacker's solar plexus before going for the pressure points on his wrist. I had myself freed in moments and turned to face my attacker.

I was more than surprised when I realized it was a boy, not more than two years older than be by the look of it. He was bent at the knees, leaning forward as though preparing for another attack. He was small for his age, but frail also because of his obvious Asian genetic structure. The thing that nearly threw me off guard were his eyes. They were dark blue and empty; dead. For a moment I thought that I was looking at what I might have looked like had I never been taken from the facility. Then again, with the twinge of loneliness that filled them I was sure I was looking at myself.

Loneliness; the only thing that can make even a murderer cry.

He used my momentary lapse to attack me, throwing me to the floor. His movements made it seem as though he was trying to quickly and efficiently deal with me, just like some scientific solution to eradicate a problem. I knew from simulations when I was in training that no matter how strong someone appeared to be, their strength could always be used against them. Almost like a lever principal could be used with objects, so too could it be used with human beings.

As my assailant moved to pull a knife or some other weapon on me, I braced myself against the ground and focused as much force as my small body could on moving the boy. I managed to push him off moments before being impaled and rolled away, recovering into a crouched position. The knowledge that he was going to kill me was strong in my mind and I knew if I was going to live to get out of there, I would probably have to kill him.

We circled each other warily, trying to fathom each other's plan of attack before it happened. I was a little scared to realize that this boy was fighting almost exactly the way I had been taught. There was no room for error in this style. I had questions and worries that were clouding my mind – I didn't know what was going on and if I had been recaptured by my family or not. I tried to push everything out of my head as I focused on the knife in his hands. I didn't have a weapon on me. He seemed to notice this and after a moment, threw the knife off to the side where it disappeared into the shadows. I wasn't sure if this was a gesture of good faith or if he was sure that he could kill me without the knife. All I know is that moments later he lunged, sending a few blows at my face. One of them connected and sent me reeling, giving him the opening to attack me.

I was once again pinned to the floor and I felt his hands encircle my throat, preparing for the kill. A deep sense of urgency exploded through my entire body and as my vision faltered, I noticed that he had made one crucial mistake. Although there were no weapons around, I could easily reach his throat. I knew I'd have to work fast – in one fluid movement I jabbed upwards, assaulting the pressure point on his throat. I was weakening and the force wasn't strong enough to kill him, but it had the desired effect of helping me escape his hands. I could feel the bruises forming and the swelling in my throat, but ignored them.

I climbed over him, turning him over. He was struggling for air and I raised my fist to strike the final blow –

When everything went dark.

All I can say is that I was hit by another dart by whoever had been watching my fight with the unknown. It was probably to save his life, I thought.

I woke up much later, in a five by eight cell. There was one barred window and a small door. It greatly resembled the cell I had spent the first five years of my life in. My first rational thoughts were that Tobias had finally captured me. But then I remembered the boy and doubted it. He didn't seem like the type to take orders from a kidnapper. He was more likely affiliated with a governmental operation or something.

There was a platter of food lying by my head and upon seeing it I got up, ready to eat. The fork was half-way to my mouth before I paused.

The memory of all the drugs that had been pumped into my system as I child came to me and I put down the food. I couldn't risk it.

"You should eat. It will replenish your strength."

I jumped. The voice had echoed around the cell from some hidden microphone – I was being watched from somewhere, but couldn't see. The cell was dark. I still didn't touch the food.

I don't know how long I was in the cell. It must have been hours before I actually dozed off. When I woke the next morning the platter had been removed and exchanged for another. I still refused to eat, despite the pain rolling through my body at the hunger. Again the voice on the intercom implore me to eat, but I didn't.

The third time I woke up, I was no longer in the cell, but back in the arena where I had fought with the nameless boy. As had happened the last time I was attacked and had to force myself to fight back. It was considerably harder this time because I hadn't eaten in so long. This time he had a gun and I nearly had a bullet put in my head. Somehow I managed to turn the situation around again. And again I found myself kissing the dirt and giving way to the darkness as I was tranquilized.

This time when I woke up I didn't bother thinking but immediately shoveled the food into my mouth. After eating as little as I needed to fill my strength I decided to escape. At first I tried subtle ways, such as calling out for people to answer questions. I only managed it the first time. Some lab-coated doctor opened the door and I tried to bolt. It took a few minutes and another tranquilizer dart to put me safely back in the cell.

The next time, after returning to my cell after another fight to the death I pretended to be going insane, screaming at the top of my lungs and throwing myself against the walls of the cell. This time they came to me faster and the minute the door was open I was gone, running down the hall and around the corner and – shot from behind by a dart.

By my count, this treatment continued over the course of sixth months. Every few days I would awake in the arena and begin another row to the death with the strange boy, without any thought or explanation. The first few times I won; and then he won once. I have a feeling when he won again me I was supposed to die but someone decided to keep me on as more training. After the fight I would return to my cell and try to escape, always coming up with a new way and using my memory of the layout of the strange building I had seen so far.

Once again I fell back into a routine and my freedom became a memory.

I had nightmares and suffered bouts of hysteria. I finally decided that if I couldn't physically escape, I'd do it a different way. I stopped eating. I allowed the boy to beat me in the fights, half-hoping that I'd be shot and everything would be over. I retreated to my memory, recreating the time with the Sweepers or my freedom on the other colonies over the years.

At some point I became sick and I can recall being moved to a hospital ward in my delirium; I was fed intravenously and given medication to keep me under their influence. However, my captors seemed to realize they couldn't keep me there and have me useful to them if I was weakened and malnourished.

When I finally regained consciousness I was greatly weakened and still lying in what seemed to be a medical ward. I was the only patient around, hooked up to an IV that was dripping medication and food into my veins. The door to the place sprang open and a single man walked in. All I could really tell through the haze in front of my eyes was that it wasn't my father's tall and impressive form. This man was short and stout.

"Your escape tactics seem to have grown more desperate," he said, his voice a high snarl that was almost the a rat might sound. "It's to be expected, considering your lack of practice. But we've seen enough of your performance to keep you as an asset here."

"Who…the hell are you?" my voice was weak both from my frailty and because I hadn't used it in months.

"It's of no consequence," he replied simply. "All you need to know is that we are a small organization that opposes the Alliance and all the secret organizations therein, including the Dutchner Association. I know who you are and I will give you two choices. You can either become one of our operatives thereby having another chance at life, and fighting for a peace that would keep children such as yourself from ever being used as soldiers again. Or you can refuse and be killed right here and right now."

"What, no third option?" I asked coldly, coughing slightly. The man did not look impressed. I noticed that he had a giant metal claw for an arm and wore ocular goggles, the kind that scientists who worked on shuttles and other thermal flames did. He must have lost his sight in his work, I guessed.

I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but something made me hold back. I wanted to live at this point in my life. I wanted to be free. If I agreed there was a possibility that someday I would leave this place, wherever it was, and get out of the battles and constant searches for me.

"Conditions," I rasped, my dry throat feeling like I had just swallowed a mouthful of dust.

"You are in no position to advocate for conditions."

"And you need me or you wouldn't have bothered keeping me alive or coming to offer me a job," I murmured, closing my eyes.

There was a silence. I could feel the air hanging with tension, and then smirked when I sensed that we had reached a stalemate. The strange man growled, "Name them."

I paused for a long moment, thinking. "I want out of the cell."

"No."

"Then kill me now."

He watched me for a long while, before nodding. "Fine. You will be moved to a larger quarters at the end of compound once you are recovered."

I nodded, closing my eyes for a moment. Every movement seemed to exude effort, even thinking. Another moment passed and I said, "No more tranquilizers and don't drug my food. And don't try to brainwash me or I'll kill you all – don't tell me there is none here because that brat you made me fight wouldn't take orders from you unless he was brainwashed."

Something twitched in his face. "Done."

"I want to have the freedom to go where I want when I want."

"Denied. You could run away."

"Then at least outside of this compound with an escort – that kid would be fine, he's good enough to keep me in check, right?" I asked, seriously beginning to fall asleep again.

"Granted – although as probation for your attempts to escape and this stunt you are not allowed to act on your new privilege for another month."

"Fine," I replied, knowing I probably wasn't going to be out of the medical facilities until then.

"Anything else?"

I began to shake my head, but then my eyes opened with realization and I looked over at him. I manufactured my face into the challenging grimace I remember my father wore. "If you try to screw me over I will kill you and everyone in this building."

He chuckled. "As you wish, Rebek – "

"My name is Lilya Hollander," I said firmly. "There is and never was anyone in your little extremist group by the name of Rebekka Dutchner and if there was, you were forced to kill her lest she kill you, got it?"

Again he laughed, not replying and left the room – which was just as well because I passed out for another few hours because of all the energy I had used up.

And that's how I came to meet Doctor J and get in on the colonies plans. At first I was not included in the top-secret missions – I was used only with minor data-recovery that needed great stealth and detail to execute the. Any small mistake could tip them either way.

The gladiatorial games that me and the boy partook in since my arrival continued at a monthly rate, more of a training assessment than anything else. I understood all too soon that we were being pitted against one another to weed out the better soldier – not even I could tell who it was – to complete an important mission. It was hard to determine who would make it.

The boy had no name. He didn't need one considering everyone knew who was being referred to when they said 'the boy' or 'the kid' or 'the subject'. He was of Japanese descent, ten years old and had operating under this group of rebels for two years. I learned both from eavesdropping around the compound and from pressing questions that he had been involved with the battle that had raged on L3 X-18999 two years before and that was where he had met Dr. J. He possessed uncanny strength which always made fighting him hard and he was precise and accurate.

We rarely conversed, but when we did it was either in English, because it was the official international language of the Earth and Colonies, or in Japanese. My first language had been German, and I had picked up English fairly quickly on the streets. Japanese, however, I learned merely to spite the boy. He would speak in the Asian tongue when he wanted to say something that he didn't want me hearing or understanding. This backfired on him considering I refused to be left out and within two months of fervent studying and listening to him speak, I was able to converse with him at a pretty intermediate level.

I called him _hyouchuu_, the Japanese word for 'icicle' or 'ice pillar' to his face and _kusotare_ behind his back, mostly when I was angry or had just been beaten by him. Hyouchuu was the more often used one and it became my name for him relatively fast. In retaliation, he called me Ruukii, the Japanese word for 'rookie'.

I can't say we developed a friendship as much as we developed a sporting rivalry. Just as I can't say that my existence at the compound was a happy one. It wasn't but it wasn't miserable either. It was yet another chapter of my life that I would have to take a day at a time. For a long while it worked.

Until the war exploded into my life once again and changed everything.

* * *


	3. Chapter Two

_**Child Soldiers**  
by KuriQuinn _

_

* * *

Chapter Two: A Dire Prognosis  
(July 15th, AC 191 – April 7, AC 195)_

To comprehend Operation Meteor and any of the events I'm about to relate to you, you have to understand why and how it all happened. It was when mankind first left Earth to inhabit the colonies that the problems began – they had left thanks to newfound technologies and increasing conflicts on earth, only to bring their conflicts and petty fights with them into the new age.

As time went by, the United Sphere Alliance strove to bring the colonies under its control, using its overwhelming military force to conquer one after the other. This began happening in the year AC 140 and went on up until AC 195. Half a century of hardship for the colonies and their people, not to mention what the war cost countless people back on Earth.

Many times, certain leaders tried to influence the colonies and Earth and bring them into peaceful agreements. None succeeded so much as Heero Yuy, who gained support everywhere, and under his leadership, the colonies declared themselves dematerialized and autonomous. We were on the road to peace.

But, like all things, it came to an abrupt end when an operative from a previously unknown group, assassinated Heero Yuy. The colonies were thrown back into turmoil and there was no possible way of reuniting them – until the War.

AC 191 brought a year that completely changed everything in my life. Not only was the war raging on all around us at an alarming rate, claiming more innocent lives each day and demanding taxing and deadly missions from Hyouchuu and I, but the DA's search for me had become a massively publicized piece of OZ propaganda. Posters and vid-segments from all over claimed that once I was found, the road to peace would be fast achieved.

The Dutchner Association of course hid any information about me and no one really knew why I was such a sought after child, but people were scared. In an age when even toddlers were raised around weapons, totting grenade shells as playthings, anything was possible. The thought that I could be captured instilled the common people with hope.

This was horrible news for me, of course, considering my disposition. I lagged behind Hyouchuu because of this – twice on a mission I was recognized by a civilian, nearly compromising both. Dr. J was losing his patience with me as was everyone else. The longer I stayed on, the bigger the threat they faced despite my talent as an operative. It was all a game of chance and their luck was running out.

As the two best and most valuable operatives, Hyouchuu and I barely ever worked together. It would be too much of a risk if either of us made a mistake that cost the other's life. One of us was expendable, but two, it was out of the question. It's for this reason that when I was informed that the two of us would be working together on an information gathering mission, I was confused.

The most amazing detail of the mission was that it would take place on earth, a place I only ever saw from the sturdy glass windows of the colonies and transports I had traveled to and on. I was excited for more reasons than that this mission involved higher-ups on both sides of the war.

The mission would not take place for me, however. It was a two days before our transport was set to leave that I endured my first blind spell. I was nine. I had suffered a terrible migraine that not even the drugs offered by J's people could lighten and the next morning I awoke in my quarters as was usual only to discover that I could no longer see. My eyes were open but it was as though someone had pulled a band over my eyes, blocking everything from my sight.

Tests and failed diagnoses followed but no one could figure out what was wrong with me. I was taken off of the mission and put under observation and quarantine, in case this were some form of disease – no one wanted to catch it, and it was sure that they would not allow Hyouchuu to be subject to such a thing.

And, just as soon as it had come, a week later the strange phenomena had gone, leaving myself and everyone around me confused.

Everyone believed it to be a result of the migraine and shrugged it off. Hyouchuu returned from his mission and was brainwashed to forget it, as had happened countless times. This one left him weakened for some reason and he joined me in the hospital wing of the compound for a short time. While they ran tests on me, he was resting and under constant observation. I don't really think resting is an accurate word considering the entire time he looked like he wanted to jump up and train.

The strange quirk about him was that he seemed to think idleness was a weakness. If he wasn't working or preparing for something, he was giving into something that damaged him in some way. J seemed to think so too because it wasn't long before Hyouchuu was back to his missions. I followed soon after, returning to the routine of missions, training and work.

Every now and then J would forget himself and our agreement, trying to treat me with the same abandon and tyranny that he did with my anti-social companion, and each time I would have to remind him not to in less than gentle terms. Computer viruses were my specialty. When I felt that he was being too hard on Hyouchuu, especially after those brainwashing sessions, I kept him out of harms way. Once I even hid with him in an air duct until he was conscious and rested enough to return to J. He almost shot me, but I'd like to think he was grateful.

It was after my second blind spell little more than two months later that I knew that it was not just a one-time phenomenon. More tests and labs were done to determine anything, but with little success. They would monitor me while I tried in vain to see or to blink away the darkness that would not go. Again, less than a week later, my sight returned. The only thing they could find out was that the migraines were putting pressure on my ocular nerves, which any idiot could have told them.

I didn't need any more people watching me like a hawks, so I learned to expect the strange spells of blindness and painful headaches, so much so that when they came I pushed myself to ignore the pain at least until I went to sleep each night and when the blindness came I dealt with that accordingly. I acted as though I could still see, my other four senses becoming my lifeline during my moments of sightlessness – I began to wear tinted glasses at all times, both when I was blind and when I wasn't, to keep anyone from noticing the vacant look in my eyes when my vision disappeared. I continued to be able to match up to Hyouchuu in our gladiatorial like competitions and carried out my missions successfully.

As far as everyone knew, whatever had been wrong with me had passed. Once again I was one of the star operatives, right up on par with Hyouchuu. J would never have known the wiser and probably would have chosen me as the sole operative on the mission they had worked so tirelessly upon had I not been blind during a flight simulation test. Hyouchuu passed it with a hundred percent. I failed by ninety-nine – the one shot I managed correctly was a stroke of luck.

Coming clean about the blindness was not easy for me, just as it was not easy to cede defeat to Hyouchuu, who had been my equal for almost three years by then. J decided Hyouchuu would remain the candidate to take part in the mission and I faded into the background. Despite my usefulness, they now had an operative on their hands with a handicap – a weakness. They didn't tell this to Hyouchuu of course – the one thing that I respected about J and his organization was that they never informed Hyouchuu or I about each other's weaknesses, should we one day become enemies. It was for this reason my fellow soldier didn't learn of my blindness until later.

In the meantime I could tell that J and his people were becoming frustrated with me, not knowing what to do. They couldn't get rid of me for fear that I would end up in the hands of an enemy – but they couldn't keep me because of my weakness. Truth be told, I didn't see it much as a weakness. I still performed my duties and task with the same attitude, still completed them, even if it was a little less accurately than when I could see. I thought of it as my own type of training, to improve my other senses and not rely on my eyes.

Still this was not good enough for J. He did so many tests on me it was like returning to the DA facilities; I drew the lines when they tried to inject with drugs that might help me. My vision was twenty-twenty when I wasn't experiencing one of the blind spells. I was a better target than Hyouchuu and a better operative – but a pilot could not have vision problems. That was the end of that argument.

It was late in AC 192 that they began to prepare Hyouchuu for the mission in earnest. I was kept completely in the dark as was usual for the two of us. In all our time together before, I had respected the way things were and allowed secrets to be carried all around me without wondering. But I was still angered and annoyed about J's decision about me – I had gone so far as to point out that he could never tell when I was experiencing one of my spells because I was just as good as always, and that the flight problem could be rectified by an auto-pilot and sensory system in the cockpit of whatever machine was being flown at the time – but he was adamant.

And I was beginning to grow into myself – at ten I was slowly becoming the mouthy brat that old friends remember when they think of me. I had to know what was so important that even someone as good as me could not take part in because of a small weakness.

Hacking their system was a joke – I couldn't understand why I hadn't done it before. Although they had enough firewalls to keep even Hyouchuu out (which said nothing because he could hack any code ever made), I broke through with ease. At first the information was confusing – it made no sense why substantial amounts of Gundanium alloy had been shipped to our facility and sent directly to engineering. It obviously occurred to me that they were building something, but what I wasn't. The age of Mobile Suits had long since been upon us and it seemed to be the only thing they could be building.

What confused me was why. The Alliance had used mobile suits extensively since their development, using them for brutal warfare and mastery over the colonies. Even though those that opposed the Alliance used Mobile Suits themselves, it was more of a way to even the battle field. Most of them hated the use, knowing that more lives were lost because of them. The building of a Gundanium mobile suit was more than evening the playing ground, it was destroying it.

In between all the training I did and the other odd jobs that Dr. J gave me, had Hyouchuu tried, I could have been found lurking in the hallways and corridors, trying to overhear snatches of conversation or continuing my liberal perusal of the security systems.

After weeks of finding nothing, I managed to break through twelve access codes, nearly trip the security alarms twenty-seven times and find a file entitled 'XXXG – 01 W WING GUNDAM.'

What I found confirmed my suspicions about the gundanium mobile suit – the plans were the most advanced that I had ever seen, the dimensions, artillery and engineering tears beyond the norm for those days – complex, but I understood them easily. The lists of materials, tools and required maintenance were extensive but possible to the point that if I had my own crew, my own time and my own people I could have built my own. The one problem was the advanced structure that only certain human beings could control – people that really had nothing to lose in life – people like me or Hyouchuu. In this case, it was Hyouchuu.

Days after finding the diagrams and plans to the gundam I stumbled across the actual proposed mission, something called Operation Meteor. Because it was such a highly important mission it was a mere summary and everything was encoded – but after a little deciphering I found myself sitting in front of my computer, staring in shock at the monitor.

The outlines to mass murder stared back at me in bald, no-nonsense print.

I had known that the weapon in the plans would be used and would cost countless people their lives, perhaps even that of the pilot. I hadn't, however, realized that it would cause the internal destruction of the colonies and the decimation of Earth and her people, all in the name of the Barton Foundation who wanted to lord over and conquer the world. The Barton Foundation was a group that was related to OZ and thus the DA through a precarious marriage. It was as though J had sold me out by preparing us for a mission collaborating with the Barton Foundation and its allies – by proxy, OZ and the DA.

Throwing caution to the wind, I confronted J, demanding how he could be playing such a part in the war. I tried to tell him how counter-productive it was and how sending a gundanium mobile suit would not help the colonies – of course as a child and an object, I had no voice and in his eyes, I had no true opinions concerning justice.

It seemed that my decision to verbally attack J was just the opportunity that he was looking for. He immediately chewed me out for betraying the organization by reading classified mission files and then for having lied about my occasional blindness. Then he informed me that I was no longer needed and that if I didn't remove myself from the compound he would send Hyouchuu after me and this time would not hesitate to have me killed on the spot.

The difference between me then and the way I am now is that back then I left. It was only after I did I realized how stupid I had been. Roaming the streets of L1, I was a moving target, no longer under the protection of J's little rebel organization and prone to being killed by anyone who wanted to try (not that I'd let them, but there was still a danger for me). Also, the knowledge of Operation Meteor taking place was enough to give me nightmares. I thought I would be able to ignore it…but the guilt lay heavily on me, knowing something of that measure was going to happen and I couldn't stop it. J had known what he was doing when he 'let me go'. I couldn't keep quiet about Operation Meteor because of its magnitude – nor could I tell anyone for fear of an equally bloody retribution that might be taken against the colonists for having come up with the plan in the first place. Blowing the colonies out space was not a bluff in those days, should the earth's commanders gain the right weapons.

I didn't know what to do and for a week or so I merely drifted around, trying not to look suspicious or attract attention. It was one night during one of my nightmares that the plans outlining Operation M kept flashing in my head. And it came to me.

I couldn't stop Operation Meteor by telling anyone or by letting it go on as scheduled. But I could at least try to soften the blow by being a part of it and fighting against it. It would mean that I would need to go to earth around the same time as Hyouchuu and find a way to stop him – my once comrade was now my enemy it seemed. In spite of having lived with him for two years, all I knew about him was that he had no weakness. But he was the closest thing to family I had, considering where I came from.

I never intended to become a pilot, nor did I ever intend to become what my father had wanted me to become – a mercenary soldier. But it seemed different to me, becoming a fighter of my own free will and to try to protect people instead of kill them. It was this thought that steered me on my way.

I remembered everything in the plans down to the smallest detail and wasted no time in acquiring a living-space and a computer where I could enter everything into it. I encoded it of course with my own brand of code, never using the same one twice, but always remembering which was which. I was confident that not even Hyouchuu could decipher my work.

Designing my gundam was a hard task, considering I was not an engineer or an architect. I needed to revert to the diagrams many times, lurk around the pilots and suits in the Alliance base on L1 and once I even snuck back into the compound to observe the scientists who were working on the skeleton of what would one day become the Wing gundam. By observing I learned what I needed and left soon after. My work was my mission and for the first time since arriving on L1, I was in control of my own life and my own destiny. Even the hunt by the DA seemed to have slowed a little.

Actually building the mobile suit without the advanced machinery that J had in his possession was almost impossible. I had to do a lot of stealing, and not just for materials – the machinery that would help me perform diagnostics, engineer the minute details, scan for problems – all of this was hard to come by. I managed to salvage a few older models of the computers and radars that I hid in an abandoned warehouse. Everything else I needed to actually pay for – I hired myself out as a specialist to the few rebel forces I knew throughout the colony I inhabited. In return for stealing secret information, sabotaging Alliance military corpse and blowing a base or two I was paid enough to buy the rest of what I needed – albeit cheap and not as up to date as what my former "employers" had.

While the Wing Gundam was finished within a year and Hyouchuu was learning to pilot it, I was still working on the inner wirework and frames of mine. I didn't see many people during the three years that it took me to build my mobile suit, which was probably a good move considering how many people were still out there looking for me. It probably would have taken any normal person working along about five years to construct the mobile suit that I did, but then again, I was not normal, as my eidetic memory and strange blind spells constantly reminded me.

The hardest past of the building was not the actual putting-together of pieces, but building it so that it would survive through any atmosphere, especially that of the earth.

Hades was definitely a custom made job. I had modified the original plans to make a suit that was smaller than Wing and that would work with the small amount of gundanium that I had – this proved a good idea considering my max speed would be much higher than Wing and my atmospheric tolerance was greater. Because I knew the mission would take place on earth, I built and customized the interior and later the exterior to have greater endurance of battles on earth than in space.

Because of my limited resources, I had used various scrap metals and pieces to form the covering over the gundanium frame, and then just painted them all black because it was the cheapest colour to buy. I took the panels from all manner of mobile suits that I tracked down in the junkyards of the colony, most of them being in relatively good shape and just outdated. The engines ran smoothly and I nicked a lot of the circuitry and mainframe computer from some downed Leo's that had 'washed up' in a nearby field.

I had copied the Wing design of weapon placement in everything but the buster rifle. I had two Vulcan guns installed thanks to a shady deal with a contact I had on the street who hooked me up, as well as a machine cannon which I made with the blue-prints from Wing. My real work of art was the beam trident which used a thermal blade to melt steal, but if compromised, operated a little like a _kodachi---_middle sized sword. I was able to disconnect the trident and use the two halves as dual held kodachi beam sabers.

As a joke for myself I fashioned the design in such a way that my gundam was the exact opposite of my former comrade. Instead of Wing, which I figured represented some kind of angel of heavenly judge I made my gundam a demon. And where were there demons? Hades of course.

An adolescent's scope on these things is not to be taken seriously – I have to admit that sometimes, despite my intelligence, I was such a stupid child…

The pivotal point in my plans was actually acquiring the gundanium – a substance more durable than any other metal and more expensive too. It would be a great test of my skills to lift gundanium from anyone – and it just so happened that I would be taking it from J and his minions. I had been monitoring their shipping schedules and yields since being let go and I knew when and where the drop-offs were made and how to navigate around unnecessary obstacles.

In the end it surprised me how easy it was to hijack a transport carrying enough to build everything I needed for my small, yet effective mobile suit. As I heard later on, J hired private investigators and put Hyouchuu on the case but all anyone ever got was that the original pilot of the transport remembered being hit over the head and then woke up hours later in an alleyway.

Because they never found out what had happened to the shipment, I can only guess that they needed to hasten to launch Operation Meteor should any enemy have discovered what had happened. It was around this time that the chief engineers of the plan had become somewhat wary of going ahead – maybe they developed a guilty conscience or something, I'm not sure and I don't know if I'll ever understand what drove them to change the mission. But it had a resulting change on my life that I welcomed when I learned about it.

After I had successfully completed everything except for the planning and the actual training, I set to work on the encoding; mostly the flight simulations that I had programmed into Hades when I had first built her. I immediately set to work on my weakness, those times when I would be sightless, setting up an auto-pilot, precision radar and sensory system. When I could, I practiced flying on whatever mobile suits I could find, noting every difference that I would need to work on. Whenever a new idea came for an upgrade on Hades, I carried it out.

I still don't understand how my activities could not be found out by anyone, but I don't quite care. The main thing was, I had managed to do this, and it meant that I was going to go all the way with this. If anyone got in my way, I'd take them out without a second thought.

As you can tell I was quite the confused child, not truly knowing what I was doing with my life but wanting to charge in without looking all the same. I understand from what I hear from my colleagues that nothing has changed, but I'd like to think I've become a little more cautious.

I was thirteen in AC 195, what contemporaries would call being a teenager. For me, it was jut another age – just another year going by where I had managed to keep hidden from everyone and not get myself killed. The date of Operation Meteor drew nearer, although none of us knew it yet. In the meantime, Hades was complete, programming and training and all.

I still looked like the pitiful child that had escaped from L3; the one with the yellow-green eyes and stringy orange-red hair that I cut by myself when it got in my way. Eight years of being without anyone to care how professional or imposing I looked had changed me. I was tall for my age, the exact height of Hyouchuu although he was fifteen, and my fear of eating anything chemically induced had turned me into a wiry, sickly skinny looking creature in faded khaki. Along with the waif-like look, I had developed a major attitude and a couple bad habits, the most prominent being self-induced pain. Nothing too dangerous, but by that time I had a head full of "shrapnel" as Hyouchuu called it years later. It's a little curious with my being an aichmophobe and all that I had so many piercings.

As more and more people began their life on colonies, the United Sphere Alliance had begun to gain great military support and seized control of colony after colony; soon, ours was acquired in a vicious battle that lasted three days. They said they were doing it 'in the name of peace and justice'. We said they were doing it because they were power-hungry, property-greedy bastards.

In early April, during the Fifth Colony Summit taking place on our colony, I had decided to bring my gundam to earth. Something in me sensed that the time would be soon. Hades was not the indestructible warrior I had wanted her to be, but she was still amazing. I couldn't let a little thing like re-entry to earth destroy my work. This brought a problem to the whole plot of sending my gundam to earth disguised as a meteor. I would gain attention from both J and his organization and anyone else I was trying to avoid.

It's a little amusing how I went about organizing my passage to earth. I decided that the one way that my enemies would not notice my leaving the colonies for earth was not if I hid…but if I left out in the open and right under their noses.

Finding a DA transport was not hard, considering half of the colonial world was out there looking for me. Knocking out the pilot, taking his place and loading up my cargo was not hard either. It was actually leaving that was the hard part. I knew that there were Alliance shuttles cruising through space, waiting for enemy attacks. If they had reason to suspect that I was not who I said I was, I could easily be blown out of space. I had to be careful how I played my cards.

After scanning the net for other DA transports that had been going to earth, I discovered that the majority of them were shuttles carrying weapons and other cargo that was to be shipped to the OZ plants on Earth. It made sense considering the primary function of the DA was to supply weapons and sometimes military personal to the OZ factions within the Alliance. If I could make any other shuttle believe that I was just following the group and carrying cargo, then I was home free.

And if I couldn't, I was going to die. It was as simple as that.

Thirteen years old and I had no concept of trying to stay alive. My biggest concern in my entire life was to be free, not to live. In fact, when I was released from the service of J's organization, I swore that if anyone else ever caught me, I would kill myself instead of being held as some test subject.

The day came when I left L1, piloting a DA transport whose logs and information database said that I was carrying twelve engines for a special unit of mobile suits that the Alliance had ordered a month ago. All of my information checked out, of course, I had made sure to triple-check every little detail. I was set to land at the manufacturing base in what had once been the administration of Kanto, Japan.

Space loomed before me as it had many times before, only for the first time I was the one flying towards it and not hiding in the cargo hold of a shuttle. A feeling of being in control for once surrounded me, making me feel giddy and nervous with excitement.

Maybe for once in my life luck was on my side, because there was no problem arriving on earth; just as there was no problem overshooting my landing so that my shuttle ended up in a forest ten miles away from the spaceport or moving Hades away from the perimeter of the shuttle landing sight. I managed to find a deserted, forested area where I threw a camouflage tarp over Hades and finally allowed myself to settle in to this new chapter of my life.

Earth to the eye of the observer on the colonies is but a beautiful marble ball, hovering in the darkness. The colonists of L1 bore the brunt of the sun on one side, considering the first stations there had started out as Solar-observation points. It was much warmer on those colonies and everything had been manufactured to survive in that environment. On earth, nothing was manufactured it seemed. When I looked at the sun, I saw a sun, and not a brilliant and blinding ball of fire that bathed everything in its fiery light. When I felt the wind, it was truly wind, smelling of grass and trees and the car exhaust from the nearby highway – it was not the manufactured and in some cases recycled air that circulated through the colonies.

I was so enamoured of the Earth that for an entire day I just sat in the cockpit of Hades, staring around me in shock.

My euphoria was to be short-lived. On April 7, two important things took place, only one of them to my knowledge at the time.

Exactly twenty years to the day since the great orator and politician himself was assassinated, Operation Meteor was launched. It was originally a secret operation by a few colonies that tried to stand against the Alliance. The operation was to secretly smuggle specially camouflaged combat weapons on to the earth. However, the Alliance leaders detected this operation.

While I was hiding out in a forest, trying to figure out what my next move was, back in space the mission was being put into effect. Except, it was not the Operation Meteor that I had read of and decided to stop. By some coalition that no one had known about, the five original scientists that had designed and built the gundams conspired to change the mission – instead of sending the gundam to wreak mass destruction on earth as a tool for the Barton Foundation and all its allies, they would go to earth as a force to bring forth peace and destroy all the factions that were against it: the Alliance, OZ, the Barton Foundation and of course, the DA.

On that day, my old friend Hyouchuu was rechristened with the ironic yet fitting name of _Heero Yuy_ and sent to earth in his Gundam to wage a war of peace, along with four other pilots.

Of course, I only learned of these facts much later in my life. At the time, I was preoccupied with the fact that an Alliance faction had stumbled onto my hiding place and tried to kill me and take my suit. I wasn't going to let either happen.

The battle was a short one, not even worth remembering or calling a battle. The weapons I had built tore through the metal and wires of their Leos easily and within ten minutes I was alone again. Killing people was not a new experience to me. After all my father had started training me when I was five, and the missions J had sent Hyouchuu – that is, Heero – always ended with our targets ending up dead. Therefore it's not curious that I simply went along with my plans as though nothing had happened once the little skirmish was over.

I knew it would be risky to tap into the military channels, what with the Alliance on edge since a failed assassination attempt on Vice Foreign Minister Darlian, but couldn't risk remaining idle for long. I had my scanners and target information search for some sort of sign or indication of where I should go.

There was a naval base located not twenty miles away. Even better, a school was in the area as well. This would provide me both with information and a cover while I was there. Hiding Hades would be the hardest part, although not impossible. I had built in a signal cloaking device and the camouflage tarp would take care of immediate worries. The sensory system would alert me to any problems – I was set.

Through my computer in Hades I hacked into the school records and negotiated my entrance into St. Gabriel's, sending them the requested (and completely false) files concerning my background information. Then I provided the necessary vidphone number and e-mail address for them to contact my 'legal guardians'. Truthfully, the contact information went directly to my vid in Hades, which had been equipped with computerized voices to sound like my 'guardians'. Sometimes computers were good for something…

As usual, I was surprised at how easy it was to enter into such an establishment, what with a few cyber credits and then a voice screener when they called to speak to an 'adult'…

I left my hiding space for the road, stopping along the way in closed store to make off with a few articles of clothing. Somehow, I had a feeling that things might go badly if I showed up on the porch of a private, prestigious school like St. Gabriel's wearing a tattered OZ uniform that I had stolen to keep warm in my days following expulsion from J and the rest.

The girl that arrived at St. Gabriel's, sobbing about having been robbed of her clothing and belongings at the bus station was a completely different person from the one that had landed on earth not a day before. They led me to the reception area and then to the administration area, trying to calm me down and promising that they would find me a uniform to replace the one I had 'stolen from me' until I could get a new one.

My room was at a good location, on the western side. Once I was alone I could safely study my surroundings without seeming suspicious – the naval base was a dot on the horizon, but with binoculars I could see it easily. It was within a good distance and once I got my hands on a computer I would be able to make my next move. I asked the girl who was showing me around if I could use the computers to send my 'guardians' an email and I was promptly shown to the third floor computer lab.

There, I made sure that my fake records had been transferred and received without a hitch, improving on my transcripts and references. I made sure to innocently tell the supervisors and teachers that my 'guardians' would be out of the country for a week but that they would be accessible through email. For some reason, these people continued to believe me.

It finally occurred to me on the first morning that I was introduced to the class under my chosen name Lilya Hollander that these people didn't have the reason not to trust me. Most of the students here, as well as the teachers, despite living in proximity to an Alliance base and Alliance controlled town, were sheltered from the battles that were happening every single day. Besides, for the most part, the children attending this school were children of Alliance and other organization officials.

This was the last thing I managed to think about before we started classed – and I realized that the easy part of the mission had been infiltrating as a student. The actually school environment was what nearly killed me.

I had never been in a classroom environment; had never been educated in a class with other students. The social atmosphere was a new experience to me, even if I could easily stick to my background story of having been home schooled all of my life. In a way, I wasn't lying. Keeping up with the classes was a different story. As I've already indicated, my education consisted of basic reading and writing and some math. Everything else I had been taught just for the sake of carrying out an ultimate end. I never remembered the why of things. Learning advanced calculus, grammar, debating, history and other such subjects was a new and terrifying experience to me. For the first time…I was stupid.

I didn't know what was expected of me or the point of these exercises. I spent the first day staring at my computer pad, wondering what it was that the teacher wanted me to do. Everything was so unfamiliar to me that I felt like a block of statue.

The only class I did well in was Japanese, a subject that I had been brought up with over the past few years, thanks to my training with Hyouchuu. I had become relatively fluid in it. Languages had always come easy for me, although only when it came to speaking. Reading and writing, on the other hand, was not one of my strong points, something that despite all the tests and exercises, I constantly failed.

This made me seem like more of a normal student, I decided as I took down the notes I was being given. If I made mistakes like other students, it would throw off suspicion. I would probably get the chance, considering English was the next subject of the day.

Schools on earth had been integrated so much that English was learned as the main language and then as the second language, it was usually that of the country. It didn't matter where you were, but it was like that. English had become the universal language.

The advent of having actual students, teenagers that were not trained spies and operatives, unnerved me. I barely even noticed the way the others looked down their nose at my'plebeian' looks and second-hand uniform.

The teachers thankfully took my blatant ineptitude for shock at being a victim of theft and gently, yet firmly told me that I would have a reprieve today, but they were expecting better work from me the next day. And I would deliver. I requested the course books and spent the rest of the night memorizing everything that I could. Because I did so much in such a small amount of time I would make a few mistakes, which would be good because it would make everything think I was an average student. None of what I was learning made sense to me, but as long as I could use it to solve the silly little problems and questions the teachers gave us, I was satisfied.

I needn't have been so worried about the next day had I foreseen what would occur.

The school had assemblies every morning, headed by the headmistress. Students of every class level were herded into a particularly large conference room and seated by grade to hear the announcements and in some cases listen to a lecture. I was seated at the far back of the room, a few seats behind a girl that I learned was Relena Darlian, daughter of the Vice Foreign Minister.

I didn't know it then, but Relena would become one of the people that I learned to love, hate and try to emulate with all my being for the rest of my years. There was not a day that has passed since my first glance at her that our lives weren't unexplainably intertwined somehow, either through physical presence or word of mouth.

The Relena from back then was very similar to the woman who served as Vice Foreign Minister for so many years following the war. Calm and quiet, the only difference between Relena then was she still had an air of naivety about her. She had lived her entire life as a socialite, trailing after her father on numerous occasions but never really seeing beyond herself. Despite her innocence regarding most of what was happening in her own front porch, she was a kind person that seemed almost bored of her life. She never looked down on those less fortunate and did attempt in some ways to better the school and surroundings.

On the morning of my second day at St-Gabriel's, I watched in silent shock as the very familiar, very blank looking figure of my former partner Hyouchuu was led to the front of the assembly and introduced. Stonily and robot-like, he announced that his name was Heero Yuy and was asked to take the seat next to Relena. He did so without comment and without looking at anyone in the room.

I felt a wave of panic rise up in my chest, immediately berating myself for having chosen a school that one of the people that was hunting me would also choose. I worried that maybe I had been followed or that someone had recognized me and I was being taken out. Not that I couldn't handle it, but still…'Heero' was the only one I knew who matched my talent – and possibly knew of my weakness.

All of these thoughts were thrown out the window, though, when from his seat across the room he sent me a piercing glare that made my senses shut down.

I was in big trouble.

* * *

TBC 


	4. Chapter Three

_**Child Soldiers**  
by KuriQuinn _

* * *

_Chapter Three: The Stranger Named Death  
(April 8th, AC 195 – April 9th, 195)_

I don't know how I got through the rest of the morning without incident and without forgetting my studies, but somehow I managed it. My teachers were overjoyed that I had taken such an aggressive jump into my learning and although my marks were not perfect, this still passed it off as nerves. They couldn't wait to see what I would do next.

Neither could I.

I didn't bother paying attention that day, but began to fidget with my computer pad, waiting impatiently for class to be over so that I could escape somewhere or busy myself with something else. Subconsciously, I avoided anywhere that my old partner might be, wondering what I would do if he decided to come after me. I had a feeling he would avoid a scene, but if I was his target he wouldn't care. That was J's training for you – get in, do what you have to do regardless, and then get out.

From this point on I will refer to Hyouchuu as Heero, considering that name is the one that stayed with him during the war and was of the most importance. I was also greatly amused with the irony of his name, as I've already stated.

Recess, or what I figured was recess, despite the lack of real running and fun, came quicker than I thought it would. I joined the masses of girls who crowded around Relena, probably fawning over her for favours or something of the sort. I couldn't keep my eyes off my former partner, who was pointedly ignoring my existence as he loitered by the water fountain down the hall. You'd think that because he seemed uncaring of my presence that I could relax. Not so with Heero, who was probably plotting the silent and quick disposal of someone as insignificant as me.

My view of him was disturbed when I found myself facing Relena, who had a paper in hand. She was staring at me curiously, almost like she was debating about something. For a moment there was a silence between us and then she spoke, her voice light and serene. "I heard that you're new here." She didn't wait for my affirmation before explaining, "It's my fifteenth birthday tomorrow. I hope you can make it."

I stared at the paper being held out to me, not sure what to do. Not accepting it would raise suspicion and cause unnecessary questions. Accepting it would put me in a situation of getting too close for my cover.

Luckily, my hesitation went unnoticed when Heero walked by and Relena turned away from me, my invitation still clutched in her hands.

"I'm having a birthday party tomorrow," she explained to him. "I hope you can come and join us."

Heero paused for a moment, before reaching for the paper and ripping it up in front of everyone in two swift movements, watching emotionlessly as it dropped to the ground.

I was among those who stared at this, although in the eyes of the others there was shock, I could feel apprehension and a twinge of anger in my own. Heero sauntered off, but not before saying something to Relena that I couldn't hear but that made her pale and watch him leave as though she had been turned into a statue. While she and the others watched him go I stooped down to gather the ripped pieces of the invitation. Something told me this was not the standard way to reply to an invitation.

"I will try to make it, Relena," I said politely, bowing my head and handing the shreds to her. She was still too focused on where Heero had been moments before. I told her that I was going to see the headmaster concerning something to do with my guardians and disappeared into the other direction, clenching my fists.

If Heero didn't stop what he was doing right now, not only would he jeopardize his own cover but mine as well! I was already in enough trouble with him being in the same area as myself, I didn't need him deciding to kill me before I had done a thing to defend the people of earth. I had already vowed that if I had to I would kill my former partner – and despite the nerves and discomfort I felt at the prospect, I knew I could follow through with it.

I had known that I wouldn't be able to get through the day without bumping into him alone at least once, but I was still surprised when I entered one of the staircases, only to find myself staring at Heero in shock. The entire stairwell was empty, but we didn't move until we heard the last of the voices fade away. For a few long minutes neither of us moved, preferring to stare at each other, both trying to scope out weaknesses in the way the other was carrying themselves. Not surprisingly, I was the first to speak.

"_Daijobu, Hyouchuu-kun_?" I asked cheerfully, as though I didn't know or care that he was here and possibly thinking up a way to kill me. "Or is it Heero Yuy now?"

He didn't reply right away, waiting until the door of the stairwell had closed completely behind me, before his eyes narrowed and he answered in his usual flat, no-nonsense tone, "_Hai_."

Looking back on it now, I guess both of us were expecting the other to attack. I made the mistake of inclining my head to one side and for some reason he took this as the opening move. I, in turn, was jumpy and expecting him to initiate the attack and immediately blocked his first punch, which he thought was an invitation to jab at me with his free left hand.

Needless to say within minutes were engaged in a silent, hand-to-hand combat. He managed to catch both of my hands and push me back over one of the railings, but before he could push me down, I flipped him over my head.

Prior to falling he managed to grab the railing and pull himself up and around, spinning about and kicking me into the wall. Before I could recover, he had pushed me into the wall, face first, both of my arms pinned behind my back. Pulling us both over, he brought us in front of the window where I could stare outside. This was done for the benefit of some onlooker if they appeared in the stairwell and Heero and I didn't have time to pull apart from the violent embrace.

"Your cooperation is necessary to my mission," he told me quietly, his voice still only above a whisper in my ear. "You have three options."

"You sound like Dr. J," I hissed, still trying to escape the vice like grip he still had on my arms. If he put any more pressure on them they would most likely break at the elbows.

He ignored me. "The first is to fight back and end up dead, thereby failing in whatever you have set out to do and complicating my mission. The second is to fight back and kill me, thereby causing me to fail in my mission. The third is to give up and – "

"And what? Die along with the rest of the people on this planet as you're going to massacre?" I snarled. "I'd rather go for the first two options."

I couldn't see his face, but I'm sure it was drawn into the same expression as usual.

"Negative – I am not following the parameters of the original Operation M."

"Bull," I managed, before I was finally able to pull back and sweep his knee, causing him to falter in his grip for a moment. This gave me enough time to scurry from his death grip on me and pin him to the floor. He did manage to punch me in the jaw before he went down though, nearly knocking some of my teeth out.

Other than that, I'm pretty sure he let me take him down.

I was leaning over him, had managed to locate the nine millimeter he always carried on him and hid it within the sleeve of my shirt, just in case anyone showed up. I kept my elbow at his throat and the gun raised before his face, trying to remain calm even though we could probably be caught by anyone in the position we were in right now and have both of our covers screwed.

"What are you doing here? And I want the truth," I ordered, increasing the pressure on his throat. He didn't appear to register any pain. "Is this about me? Did J order you to come get me or something in addition to your little world-domination plans?"

"_Iie_," Heero replied. "He is aware of your movements and incorporated your flight from L1 in our plans. You are not a threat as of yet and may operate as a free agent unless your mission deviates from my own – then you will be given the choice of joining me or being terminated."

I was so stunned that I dropped the gun and let go of Heero. He took the opportunity to stand, but didn't attack me again.

"You mean that old bastard _knew_ where I was the whole time?" I demanded. "Why didn't he do or say anything, I thought – I thought he was trying to have me killed."

"The cost outweighed the need," Heero grunted.

"I'll give you cost outweighed the need," I snarled. "Even after I get out of there he thinks he can control what I do? By using you as his tool?" I was positively spitting with rage at the moment, "Screw J and Screw his missions – and you know what?" I punched Heero in the face, barely causing him to stagger. I was surprised that he hadn't reacted to stop the blow as he always did – but I hid my surprise and continued, "Just for good measure, screw you! Don't come near me again and don't get in my way or I'll kill you – true Operation or not!"

And, still snarling, I stalked off.

But not before I heard the quiet, flat and uninterested reminder, "Don't forget to keep taking your medication. It could be a hazard."

J, that bastard! He had told Hyouchuu after all!

I turned around, screaming every obscenity in every language that I knew at Heero, but he had already disappeared again. Unfortunately, in his place stood a very reproachful looking teacher who was not impressed with my verbal display.

"Young ladies should not use that kind of language, Miss Hollander," he said, looking down his nose at me. "Perhaps we should have a little chat about this?"

And I was forcibly led towards the headmaster's office, unable to retaliate for fear of risking my cover.

If Heero had the ability at the time, I'm sure he would have been smirking at me. Unfortunately, whenever I saw him, I had to endure the smug aura radiating off of his completely stolid persona. This in retrospect was all the more worse.

(-)

I avoided Heero as much as I could, which became easier once I memorized his schedule and made sure to steer clear of places he would frequent. One would think that despite the fact that he was masquerading as a student two years ahead of me academically, I wouldn't see much of him. For some reason, fate seemed to like to make fun of me.

My studies were going amazingly well. My teachers were so impressed that they decided to put me in more advanced classes and within a day there was talk of skipping me ahead. It wasn't any true brilliance – as I already stated, I never understood what I was learning. But facts would store themselves in my head almost like in a computer and I could recall them on command. I sometimes think that if I could make sense of everything I knew I could have been one of the most brilliant scientists in the world.

I decided to go to the school computer lab and run a remote diagnostic of my gundam, and begin my first plan of action. It would take a week for the school to process my request for a laptop, along with a whole lot of paper work that I would need to get meticulously right. So for the moment, hacking the systems from the school computers was my only option; a dangerous option at that, if I made a mistake. Most computer systems, especially those under control of the Alliance, had enough firewalls set up to put J's to shame.

I really shouldn't have been surprised to see that Heero was already seated in the small lab, the blinds drawn and typing furiously. When I opened the door, he tensed, his hand reaching below the desk for the nine millimetre that he constantly had with him – he relaxed only slightly when he saw who it was.

My gut instinct was to turn around and come back later, but my pride and still rising anger at Heero's presence caused me to march over to the computer at the end of the room, sit down and log in. I made sure that I was hidden and that if he felt like glancing over he would not be able to see what I was typing by the keys that my fingers touched. Heero was weird like that.

It didn't take long to delve into the secret and 'secure' Alliance military channels, having stolen the codes days earlier when the Alliance faction stumbled upon Hades and I. The amusing thing about the military was that they put so much effort into guarding their networks in their bases, but their machines and suits which required a wireless communications network were so easy to get into.

My twelve-digit password was rejected for the fourth time. It looked as though they had changed all of the access codes again. Surprisingly intelligent for a military faction that didn't know they played host to a notorious secret organization like OZ.

Today I was lucky – it only took thirty minutes before I managed to crack the cipher, using a much older access code to enter into the system and request a new password. And then the information opened up to me – I grinned when I saw the layout before me. With ease I navigated my way through the encrypted message, finding my way to the information files of the nearby naval base. The not so secret military data told me everything I wanted to know about it – I'm sure that if I had wanted to, I could have pulled up individual files concerning all of the soldiers that were stationed there. But that would be getting too close. I was better not to know the face of the enemy.

I nearly shrieked in surprise when a hand reached in front of me, typing in a command and bringing up diagrams and files concerning the weaponry and arsenal of the base. "What the hell!"

Heero didn't answer me, almost looming over me as he looked at the date concerning that anti-undersea-carrier torpedo. Words and plans flashed before me, Heero being a faster reader than myself – I could only catch 'radio control' and 'heat-seeking systems' before he closed down the search and started away. "So is there a reason why you're over here and not doing your own thing on that computer?"

"Damage control," he replied. I didn't understand him. He could either be referring to the fact that he was making sure that whatever I was doing wouldn't mess up his work – or he could actually mean damage control.

Something suddenly occurred to me.

"How far is your suit exactly?"

He didn't reply.

"I mean, considering the fact that you're here but I don't see Wing – " he gave me a piercing look, either to tell me to shut up or because he still wasn't reconciled to the fact that I, an unpredictable factor in this scenario, knew more about his mission than he wanted, " – and I doubt you'd have time to stash it if you only just showed up around here."

He regarded me coolly for a long moment before answering, "Wing is approximately eight-point-six miles from the coast."

"_From _the coast?" I whistled. "What's it doing there? I didn't know that you were meant to land in the ocean – it's kind of stupid. There are Alliance undersea factions roaming around everywhere – particularly the new Pisces and Cancer models." He sent me another meaningful look, which despite being void of any emotion told me enough. "Oh."

I couldn't help the jibe. "So…the Perfect Soldier of J's crash landed into the ocean, huh?"

I received a sharp blow to the head, but continued to grin despite the stars in my eyes. "So that means you have to either retrieve it or destroy it and then you're out of here, right?"

"Hn."

"You know, a 'yes' would have taken up exactly the same amount of time, Hyouchuu," I told him pointedly. I stood and smirked at him condescendingly. "So I guess this is the part where you swallow that mini-chip of pride and ask me for my help, right?"

"Negative."

I did a double-take.

Heero turned, obviously getting ready to leave.

"Then why the hell did you just stick your nose into my business – and let me know what you were gonna do?"

"It's better for you to know and have the intelligence to stay out of my way than to not know, find out and then stick your nose in matters that are not yours," he replied silently, just as he walked out and closed the door behind him.

"I wouldn't have given you help even if you did ask for it!" I yelled after him, even though I knew he'd probably just ignore that as well.

I was fuming – things changed for the worse. Not only was Heero on this mission, which he still hadn't explained to me, but he had become smug since the last time I saw him. No doubt that J had poisoned his mind to make him think he was the better of the two of us. Was he in for a rude awakening!

As if I cared about his stupid mission? He could go self-destruct for all I cared!

Okay, I probably would have cared if he blew up in his state-of-the-art mobile suit. I had known Heero the longest that I had known anyone else my age. Losing him in something stupid like a mobile suit blowing up was not the way I wanted him to die. In fact, if Heero was going to die at all, it was only fair that I be the one to kill him – because as far as I knew and had always known, I was the only one that could match him.

For the time being, of course. I knew that the older we got and the more both of us developed, there would be some serious differences emerging between us.

The day Heero decided to go after his gundam, I was still trying to get my bearings and settle my priorities. I thought that considering Relena was the daughter of the Vice Foreign Minister and that there had recently been an assassination attempt on him that the best place to start would be in her home.

This proved to be one of my less intelligent ideas, considering I had had no idea what I should expect in attending one of Relena's parties. It was like a gala, where absolutely nothing but boring, aristocratic talk went on. Practically everyone had been squished into the dining room of the large house, and I was beginning to feel dizzy not ten minutes after arriving.

I have always been a little claustrophobic, but it was also the fact that I looked much different than everyone else and pretty much stood out that was making me feel slightly out of touch with things. I hadn't known that the party was going to be formal, so I had showed up in the only thing that I owned at the moment besides the rags I had come to earth in: the school uniform.

Of course everyone understood – the story in circulation of how I had been robbed was still going strong. In fact, every few minutes some high society belle would walk up to me and talk loudly about how sorry she was that such a thing had happened, and where had my bodyguards been at the time? Did my guardians have enough money to replace everything?

I wished I could have told her that my "guardians" could produce enough money to buy the entire campus of St. Gabriel's, but I decided it would probably be a stupid thing to do.

"Lilya, are you alright?" a voice interrupted my thoughts about an hour after I arrived. I had removed myself from the crowds of people, trying to shrink into the corner. Something told me that if I ever mentioned this to Heero he might cast aside his usual uninterested façade and say 'I told you so.'

Looking at Relena so closely, for the first time I realized that she was actually strikingly pretty. Although we lived in a country of dense Asian populace, she only looked Asian in certain lights, specifically her small facial shape and slightly slanted eyes. Everything else about her from her high cheekbones, long blond hair and deep blue eyes suggested a more European or Caucasian background. She always dressed the best she could and I vaguely wondered if she had a boyfriend or if they still practiced that silly thing such as arranged marriages in the high society families.

"Thank you for inviting me, Miss Relena," I said politely, bowing my head. I had an inclination that attempting a curtsey would floor me.

Relena smiled, and I couldn't help thinking that she had already developed some poise, probably for watching her father and accompanying him to so many different places. Her eyebrow creased slightly as she studied me. For a moment I felt the same feeling of being analyzed as before, but then she asked, "Are you sure that you don't wish to borrow something to wear? You seem uncomfortable."

"It's alright, besides, what would fit?" I joked. "You're taller than I am – don't worry, my suitcases and other things should be replaced and arriving soon. I'm annoyed that they didn't come in time."

We shared a laugh, although at the back of my mind I was sure that before I could make good on that lie I would be long gone from this school. She looked around the room and then back at me, the pasted politicians smile on her face that told me she had performed her duty in speaking to me and wished to make a non-insulting getaway. "I see Heero didn't come after all. Did you perhaps see him back at the school?"

"No," I said, truthful for once. "I haven't seen him all day."

We stood in an uncomfortable silence.

"Oh," she seemed crestfallen for a second, and then brightened up.

"Well, I'd better be getting back to my other guests," the Darlian's daughter said, using the universal phrase that meant that she was bored dealing with me and wished to excuse herself politely. "I hope you enjoy yourself."

"Thank you," I acknowledged.

I moved off in the opposite direction, sticking dangerously close to walls. Once or twice I stopped to talk to a few of the guests, but mostly I kept trying to inch towards the exit. I turned suddenly around the corner and bumped into someone, losing my balance and tumbling to the floor. When I looked up, I was slightly surprised at the sight. The man that was bent over trying to pick up his scattered papers was familiar, and I'd only ever seen him on television. I hadn't known that the Vice-Foreign Minister was going to be home.

Relena was very much the same as the man who had brought her up – they both had a way of tilting their chin and looking at you in a way as they spoke that made you feel as though you were the most important person in the universe. This was probably what made and would make both of them such influential leaders during and after the war.

The way that the Vice Foreign Minister looked at me was not unlike the way Relena did – calculating, as though trying to understand where I fit into the big scheme of things. There was not one unkind feature in the Vice Foreign Minister and when I saw the way he and Relena looked at each other, I felt the stinking jealousy of someone who never had a family. Was this what I might have had if there had never been a war?

Somehow I didn't think so.

"I am sorry," I told the Vice Foreign Minister, getting on my knees to help pick up the papers. Several things caught my eye and I had to concentrate to keep my face void of any recognition. They were satellite photos of meteors – upon closer inspection I realized that these meteors were mobile suits, disguised as meteors or even space junk that could rain down on earth. I didn't manage a clear view of them because Relena was suddenly by my side and gently taking the photos from my hands to help her father.

Although she sent me another one of her calculating, bordering on suspicious stares, I ignored it, the wheels in my head already turning at a breakneck speed. I had known that the title "Operation Meteor" had implied the manner in which the suits if gundanium alloy would come to earth – I had read so much in the project reports in J's organization. I had had an idea of how Heero had arrived on earth – but I had had no inclination that there was more than one gundam or, for that matter, more than one pilot.

This seriously complicated my decision regarding the operation – of course, Heero had told me that the mission he was taking part in was not the one I had decided to doggedly oppose. Did he know of the other gundam pilots? My instincts told me that he didn't, or he would have mentioned them despite how hush-hush he was about the entire mission. Which meant that, if he encountered one of these other pilots, there was a very high chance that he would mistake them as enemies and attack them.

Not good for his or my mission. I had to tell him, and soon.

I don't know what showed in my eyes, but Relena's face suddenly looked as though she had realized something. And she was straightening up, businesslike as usual.

"I see I made it to the main even just in time," a voice interrupted our little moment. The Vice Foreign Minister sauntered off, probably to a meeting or a vid-call. Relena looked a little dazed, as though coming out of a dream when she noticed that the person that had interrupted us was talking to her. He appeared and pressed a gift into her hands, looking earnest. "Happy birthday, Relena."

She thanked him absently, ready to make a quick escape when he remarked, "So Heero's not here after all? Maybe it _was_ him that I just saw…"

"You saw Heero?" Relena and I exclaimed at the same time. We looked at each other and I mentally cursed myself for the more than obvious slip. Heero was going to kill me…but not before I killed him for being seen by someone who knew us and if tracked down could easily identify us to the authorities.

No longer looking at Relena and lost in my own little world where I was intent to find Heero, I coughed, quietly managing a, "I'm going out for some air" and slipping away.

I ran out of the house, ignoring the odd stares that I was given by the other guests. There was a commotion behind me, but I didn't care, hurrying to the end of the property. My own nine millimeter was strapped to a holster beneath my uniform cardigan.

I had a pretty good idea where Heero was – and I knew whatever he was going to do, he was going to do it quickly. There was no way that I was going to make it to the naval base on foot before he carried out whatever plans that he had.

It was lucky for me that Relena was just as tenacious as ever back then. She had ducked into her limousine and was ready to come barreling down the drive and I, not knowing what else to do, jumped out in front of the car to get their notice.

Not one of the smartest things I've ever done, but it did get their attention – Relena's driver was forced to stop, not a foot away from where I was standing.

"Lilya!" Relena cried as she hurriedly rolled down the window. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I replied simply, noticing that a few people were barreling out of the house trying to come after the car, no doubt to stop her from going. Without waiting, I grasped through the window and unlocked the door, jumping in over Relena before she had anything to say about it. "But I must insist on accompanying you."

"Really, Lilya, that's not necessary – "

"I don't think you understand me, Miss Relena," I said lightly, still trying to keep up my cheerful façade. I removed the revolver from inside my cardigan and pointed it at Relena. She looked completely petrified and when I looked at the driver through the rear-view mirror, he did as well. I felt a little bad scaring Relena and this kindly looking old man, but it couldn't be helped. "I've gotta find Heero. Now. So you're gonna show me the way before I have to put a bullet in your pretty little head. _Verstandten_?"

Relena stared at the firearm before her in shock and then at me. She nodded finally, obviously not liking the situation, as did the driver. People were coming up fast behind us. I commented to the driver, "If I were you I'd drive or you'll never get out of here."

He did as he was told and I watched as the world outside the car began to pass quickly by.

I felt Relena's eyes on me the entire time, and on the gun. Noticing this, I smiled and put it away. "I'm sorry for threatening you. Miss Relena, but I need you to take me seriously. If you try anything I'll take it out again, so for both our safety and Heero's, don't make me."

We drove in silence until we reached the road leading to the naval base. Vehicles of all sort crammed the road, trying to evacuate the vicinity. I could see that once we reached the place, it would be much slower if we took the limousine – especially because we looked like civilians.

Ordering the driver to stop, I hopped out of the car and began running towards the naval base, intent on finding Heero. The place looked as though it had been attacked with nuclear weapons, but I knew for certain that this was Heero's handiwork, even if it was a little sloppy.

Explosions wracked the place and I would have been hit, if it weren't for the fact that I had to turn around and run to save Relena, who had followed me into the battlements, from being assaulted by a wounded officer.

She screamed when I put a bullet through his knee, felling him, and grabbed hold of her, pulling her along. Obviously she was not accustomed to such treatment.

'Well that's what you get for coming here in the first place,' I thought angrily as I shoved her along, trying to keep both of us from harm.

I pulled Relena down as a soldier ran by, injured as he bled down the side of his face from shrapnel wound in the temple.

"Evacuate!" he yelled, spotting an ambulance. "Take the wounded to the hospit – hey, where's the driver?"

As soon as it was safe, we were off again, though now I had my gun out again and was holding it ready, not only for keeping Relena in line, but for protection in case we were spotted, something I had a feeling was inevitable.

I was right.

Two soldiers noticed us and shouted at us to leave. I pushed Relena down to the side and shot them quickly, aiming to stun rather than kill, then swung around and knocked them both out with a round-house to the head. They dropped and I turned around, yanking Relena to her feet even as she stared in shock at the felled men.

"Y-you - "

"They're not dead, if that's what you're thinking," I told her pointedly. "It's not my style to kill unless absolutely necessary. Besides, you could say that I'm doing them a favor. Now they'll be sent home and that's two less soldiers in the war…you're a pacifist, aren't you Relena?" I chatted, trying to keep her at ease as we weaved in an out of the machinery, hiding from soldiers as they ran from the place. "I mean, your father seems to be really anti-war, I'd think his daughter would hold the same views, ne?"

She wasn't listening, but staring straight ahead. When I looked up, I saw with relief the same scene that she saw.

Heero was hunched over a large, retro-looking mainframe computer, punching in commands repeatedly. There was a rumble and the sound of an alarm and I realized what he was doing. Activating the missiles located within the base; there was only one thing that would need all these missiles to be destroyed and that was Wing. I was sure that he was setting everything up so that they triggered the self-destruct mechanism that was built into the suit.

So that was the plan, was it?

"Don't do it, Heero!" Relena yelled, breaking free of my grasp and hurrying over so that she stood only a few feet away from him. Heero faced us, his hands clearly holding a detonator. I saw his face mix with a small amount of confusion as he looked at the girl and muttered something that looked to be her name.

Seconds later, he was pointing his gun at her head.

"Heero, what are you and Lilya doing here?" she cried, not flinching at the gun, although her hands were shaking. "Who are you? Those are torpedoes, aren't they? I just want to know more about you!"

I watched as tears streamed down Relena's cheeks and found the same confusion Heero was facing welling up inside me. What was wrong with this strange girl? Any normal person would have tried to run away by now, and here she was demanding answers from someone who was obviously a trained killer.

"What did you bring her here for?" his voice shocked me back into reality and I looked straight at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. His hold on the gun didn't waver at all. It occurred to me that he would rather shoot me than Relena.

I shrugged and put mine back into its holster.

"I needed a ride," I replied. For once, he didn't question me, but returned to the matter at hand.

Relena hadn't moved an inch

"You know too much. _Sayonara_, Relena," he said simply, cocking the pistol and preparing to fire. I was used to this form of behavior from Heero, and a part of me was disbelieving that he would actually shoot her. The fact that he had faced me many times with that expression and actually fired the gun didn't make me doubt his intentions.

I waited to watch her crumple to the floor, falling to the seedy asphalt. Even as the shot rang out, however, it wasn't Relena that fell. Instead, to both our astonishment, Relena was still standing there in shock, but it was Heero that had slumped, dropping the detonator from his hands as he grasped his arm, where a long rivulet of blood was running down.

I thought for a moment that maybe it had backfired – but that was not acceptable for Heero. As Relena made a beeline for Heero, I whirled around to locate the enemy shooter.

At first I couldn't see anything through the shadows, but when I finally managed I was a little surprised. The boy was about Heero's height, pale and with a long braid of chestnut hair falling over his shoulders. His face was hidden underneath the brim of a black cap and he stood poised at the end of the deck almost casually, as though he wasn't pointing a firearm at Heero.

"You're obviously the bad guy here, right?" he called out to my wounded former partner, as though trying to make a joke of it. His voice was even laced with a tone of humor that made me want to hit him for a second. He turned to Relena and I. "Are you two ladies alright? Duo Maxwell, at your service."

I realized suddenly what had happened. This stranger had been standing at a point where it seemed like Heero was aiming at both Relena and I. That, coupled with the fact that she was dressed for a party and I looked as though I had just stepped out of a school, he had thought that we were both in trouble – probably hostages.

The only thing that really bugged me was that I didn't know what he was doing here in the first place. I didn't like the idea of being held at gunpoint by someone I didn't know, even if he had only been trying to 'save' us. Heero was one thing…a stranger was a whole new ballgame, even if Heero was more likely than anyone else to succeed in killing me.

Relena was leaning over Heero, asking if he was alright. I remained still, hoping that the stranger's attention would pass from myself to the others. I needed precise timing if I were going to down this stranger.

Relena suddenly gasped as Heero lunged past her for his gun. The kid shot him once again and blood flowed freely from his leg.

"Don't hurt yourself further," he smirked, his attention no longer on me. In less than a second, I managed to un-holster my gun and click the safety off, pointing it at his head and firing a warning shot past his ear.

"Do that again and you'll be talking through the extra hole in your face," I told him matter-of-factly. He heard every word and was now staring at me as though I had grown an extra head. Obviously he had not expected the schoolgirl to tote a weapon and shoot him of all things.

"Leave us alone!" Relena yelled behind me, shielding Heero with her body. "Why did you have to hurt him?" I felt amusement at her comment. She was shielding the guy that had just been seconds away from killing her. Irony of ironies…

"Hey wait a second!" the guy's cobalt eyes were flashing. "Now I'm the bad guy?"

"If you want to put it that way," I told him shortly. "Yeah. Now, back off."

He looked me up and down, before a patronizing smirk appeared on his features. "Careful there, squirt, you wouldn't want to hurt yourself."

The name brought back a long-forgotten memory of the friends I had had to give up because I had been on the run. Fury bubbled up inside of me at the idea that this jerk was patronizing and I pulled the trigger, the shot ripping through the air as the bullet grazed the side of the newcomer's neck. He swore and slapped the spot with his free hand to stop the flow of blood from the scrape.

"I've been firing guns since I was five," I told him squarely. "I know what I'm doing, trust me. If you do anything else to piss me off, I promise that next time, I won't miss."

Were someone watching this scene play out, it might seem slightly laughable. Here were four teenagers standing in the middle of a slowly exploding base. Two were pointing their guns at each other, a third was holding two wounds and the fourth was looking worriedly at said wounded teen.

An alarm suddenly went off and we all looked over as a ship appeared nearby, carrying two mobile suits, one of them being a battered and very broken looking Wing, and the other being a suit I had never seen before, but it could only be another gundam. Like mine it was almost completely black, but where mine looked like a ghost of itself, the kid's looked whole and slick, its form and frame strongly built with a steady gundanium exoskeleton and slick panels.

It was now obvious to me who this person was. My mind went back to the photos that I had just seen and had wanted Heero to know about. It was clear that not only did Heero not know of any other pilots, but the other pilots didn't seem to know anything about him.

'Who the hell organized this?' I wanted to know.

"Shit, I miscalculated the high tide," Duo cursed and my gun lowered a little. He looked from me, to Heero, who was panting lightly behind Relena. For a moment I watched both pilots' eyes meet and then Heero had moved again, launching himself forward onto the detonator. The stranger shot at Heero again and again – I recovered myself and joined in the fray, trying to get closer to the stranger for a direct take-out. I ignored Relena's shrieks, especially as a bullet that was meant for my head whizzed past me and embedded itself in a machine near where she was crouched.

"Cheap shot!" I snapped at him furiously, finally knocking the gun out of his hands and then attempting to elbow him in the face. He caught me in time and leered at me, trying to push me down to the ground by bending my arm back.

"Would you back off!" he demanded, trying to push me out of his way.

"That's not your suit," I snapped. Fighting him was difficult, because he neither seemed to want to let me go or keep me too close. He was about to knock me in the ribs but missed as the missiles were suddenly launched, making the two of us lose balance and fall in a heap on the floor. I pushed him off of me with my foot and whirled around, trying to find Heero in the mess that was the base.

"What the hell are you doing?" I shrieked at him as he staggered backwards, the detonator still in hand even after he had activated the missiles. He was already wounded; he should have let me take care of this. I knew that we weren't exactly comrades – but out of the rest of our strange company, Heero was the one I would most likely want to aid.

He mumbled something that I couldn't hear, before falling back into the water beneath the docks.

"You idiot!" I hollered, breaking away and running as though to jump after him. Before I could do anything, I was grabbed from behind and held back as the missiles hit the gundams. We watched in anxiety, but nothing happened as the missile debris cleared. Not even a scratch was visible as they sunk back into ocean. From the looks of it, the self-destruct devices had been neutralized.

I noticed my captor's long braid out of the corner of my eye and began to struggle further.

"You…fucking…idiot!" I tried to fight him off.

"Hey, I just saved your ass," he shot back, and then looked back to where the gundams were disappearing. "Shit, do you know what it took me to get those heaps of junk up here?" He was pulling me away from the dock, Relena forgotten even as she still sat near the mainframe. "I had to fight off a damn Alliance search party, which was no picnic, kid."

"Shut up, you ruined everything," I snapped. "Where the hell are you taking me?"

"Pipe down and I'll tell you later."

"Bastard!" I kicked back.

"Yeah, probably – now come on!"

* * *

TBC 


	5. Chapter Four

_**Child Soldiers**  
by KuriQuinn _

* * *

Chapter Four: Rescue  
(April 9th, AC 195 – April 10th, 195) 

It wasn't until an hour later when I finally got a good look at my assailants face that I recognized him. I wondered why I hadn't made the connection when I first saw him; even without seeing his face the way he carried himself was still the same. There was also no forgetting the haunted cobalt eyes that had once glared so angrily at me or the defensive hunch of the shoulders.

He lived now under the alias Duo Maxwell and I wondered how he had come by his new name. Had it been like me, something he had pulled together from nothing, or did it have significance? I had a feeling it was the latter, because when I searched my brain I recalled a so-called 'Maxwell Church Tragedy' which had taken place not long after I left the colony and quite close to where the Sweepers had lived.

I didn't ask if he remembered me, although I was sure that he did – my face had been plastered across the colonies, it was hard to imagine him not recognizing me. I didn't ask where the others were, considering taking a page out of my own childhood horrors, I could take a rather educated guess. And although I really wanted to, I didn't ask how he had come by the gundam.

It was a rocky eighteen-hour ordeal, filled with hundreds of death threats from both of us and at least six close calls with our guns. He had dragged me to an empty, downtown diner before the authorities showed up at the base and then proceeded to grill me about my business and how I knew Heero – I didn't tell him much, but I needed him to know enough to be able to help me out. Considering he was a gundam pilot it was obvious that he would have someone backing him up in the mechanical department which meant I might be able to get some working devices to break Heero out.

Even though technically we were both free agents now, I still felt a sort of obligation to find Heero. I knew he wasn't dead; it would have taken more than an explosion and a little dip in the ocean to kill him.

I managed to use a computer at a nearby internet-café and hack into the Alliance information database, where news of the attack at the J.A.P base had just leaked through. A lone youth had been picked up and was ready to be place in protective custody as soon as he regained consciousness at the Alliance Naval Hospital.

Duo appeared, having followed me, and once again began to pry out of me exactly what I had been doing at the base. After and all-out argument where I fired the same questions back at him, I told him to just disappear so that I could find my partner. I didn't need him messing up our plans further. It took him a fraction of a second for his personality to do a complete one-eighty and suddenly he was offering to help me.

I wasn't able to tell him to not bother, before he had sat down at the unit next to me and brought up a whole load of data that I hadn't even thought of looking through. Everything we needed was there: location of the room, building schematics, the medics had even taken photographs of Heero's unconscious form for study. He looked like a corpse.

Because I was low on ammunition and arsenal, I allowed Duo to make a call to one of his contacts and two hours later we were hooked up with a compact infiltration unit as well as three battery-powered parachute packs in front of a large imposing building.

Through a pair of binoculars, I tried to locate the fiftieth floor. Behind me, Duo was cooped within a telephone booth, talking to someone I didn't know, but had a suspicion about.

I studied my new 'partner' as he stood with his back to me. He had changed a lot from the small, angry Kid I had met so long ago. He had long since lost the emaciated bone structure. The boyish curves of his cheeks had become more angular over the past seven odd years.

"…That's right. Also, two almost identical cars are broken. So I want you to have your lunch behind the yellow field. Okay, and I'll help you cut wheat later," he was explaining as I poked my head into the booth.

"We need to swing by the backfield to pick up my car," I reminded him. "And don't touch Heero's or he'll kill you."

"See you," Duo said hurriedly into the receiver and hung up the phone. He looked at me as he pushed past and walked out of the booth. "You know, it's rude enough to listen in on other people's conversations, but to interrupt them …"

"I wasn't interrupting," I said with a frown on my face. "I was telling. Can we go now? I haven't got all day."

"Hold your horses, squirt," he smirked. I didn't even notice my hand move and suddenly I had gripped him by the end of the braid so that he couldn't move, and my other fist was balled in front of him, ready to plow forward full throttle.

"I told you to stop calling me that," I reminded him, thinking back to another argument we had had earlier. I don't know why I didn't want him calling me that, even if it was originally his name for me, but it just held so many bad memories I couldn't take it. In answer, he grinned at me and pried my fingers from around his hair, before twisting my arm around so that he held me in front of him, my elbow pulled almost to the center of my back in a tight hold.

"No problem, kiddo, as long as you stop jumping the gun. You're attracting attention," he let go of me and wagged his finger at me patronizingly. "But don't worry, I forgive you this time."

I glared at him strongly, trying to manufacture my best imitation of Heero's 'glare of death'. It didn't quite have the desired effect, because instead of cowering into himself, he frowned at me. "Homicidal much?"

"Only since I met you," I replied. "Can we hurry up now?"

"Patience is a virtue," he wagged his finger at me and I felt irritation wash over me. This guy was annoying! "Alright, so the way I see it we don't bother going in directly, they'll ask us too many questions and we'll need to show ID and have credentials to be checked – things'll just get messy."

"Air ducts are out – I checked the system this morning. According to the floor plans there are too many turbines for air distribution to support our entering through there – unless you really want to be shredded within an inch of your life."

"There's an employee's entrance at the back of the building, as well as an elevator the engineers used when this place was built," Duo replied as we approached the large building. "We can easily get through without being noticed – unless you suck at stealth, then I'd tell you to sit this one out – "

"If I sucked at stealth, I'd be dead right now," I told him crisply. "I may not be a shadow on the wall, but anything you dish out, I can send right back. Are you done scoping out my abilities yet, or would like to know my pre-bedtime routines and bathroom habits too?"

"I think it's time to visit the patient," he seemed to be tuning me out. "Come on."

"_Idiot_," I grumbled and followed, tightening the harness of the parachute around me.

Entering the building was child's play, the only interruption being a lone janitor that we had to knock-out, but he didn't see us, so we were safe. The trip in the elevator took longer than the fully-operational elevator for guests, but that was good for us because it allowed Duo the time to hack into the security database and time it to disable itself when we left the building.

"You know where he is?"

"Fiftieth floor."

"Yeah, obviously, we know that," Duo sounded impatient. "Where? We can't exactly just call out for the injured kid under suspicion of destroying an enemy base and hope that our mission stays easy."

"He's in the ICU, room five-oh-one-seven," I replied. "Smart ass."

"Takes one to know one."

The doors opened and I got ready to walk out…anything to get away from the braided baka, but I was hauled backward into the elevator.

"What?" I demanded.

"Security camera," he replied, nodding outside. "I just remembered something I read in the floor plans of this place. The system is hooked up so everything that goes on can be seen from the control room; as luck would have it, the same room looks in the ICU where our friend happens to be."

I grinned. "Now I'm getting you. I take it you know where we're going then?"

"Down the hall to the left."

"Well, what are we waiting for?"

"You to not get caught by the camera."

I didn't bother to reply to that one, and we moved out, sneaking beneath the camera where it couldn't see us, and then slipping into the control center, knocked out the on-duty watchman.

"Can you establish a connection?" Duo asked me as he flicked on the monitor and began to search for the room where Heero was. I didn't answer, and when the camera image of Heero's retrained form appeared on the screen I balked. He was lying on a steel gurney-like table, his arms and legs strapped down, seemingly unconscious. "Hey, are you okay? You're shaking."

"This is all your fault!" I hissed, turning away from the screen. Something about the way Heero was just lying there, completely restrained had dislodged some distant memory. I felt a sickening sensation in me like I was about to throw up. "We – he wouldn't be in this situation if you had just minded your own business!"

"Chill out," Duo looked almost pitying. "Look over there."

He pointed to the view screen that showed Heero. He had started to move, flexing his hands and struggling against the bindings that held him. I was surprised that he hadn't managed to make quick work of them, but this stopped when he looked up and stared right back at me and Duo, who raised his finger to his lips in a gesture for Heero to remain quiet.

"Even a guy like you knows when to keep silent," he said in a hushed voice. "I'm sure you're a well-trained soldier like me. You must be able to read my lips, right? You've been awake this whole time without changing your pulse or breathing pattern. Impressive. I want to ask you a few questions, as your friend over there wouldn't answer. And, I'll help you get outta there, free of charge."

"Skip the talk, baka!" I hissed, feeling sweat form on the back of my neck. This place…this hospital reminded me too much of home, which made sense, considering the DA, although an outlet of OZ, primarily used Alliance research and information to carry out their plans and to build their facilities.

"Hey, shut up, stop swearin' at me in another language," Duo grumbled, reaching into his hair and fishing around it in.

"What the hell are you doing now?"

"You want in? You're getting in," he pulled something small and rectangular from his braid.

"You hide explosives in your _hair_?" I couldn't hide my disbelief. He grinned up at me.

"It's a neat place to hide things," he replied with a shrug as he slunk towards the door. "Some officers will do a full fucking cavity search and not bother to check my hair."

I considered this piece of information and nodded. It made sense. People never really saw hair as more than something that covered their heads. I watched him place the device into the key-lock of the door. He backed up a step and shielded his face. There was a muffled click and I did the same as a sudden blast rocked the entire floor.

Dust swept through the room and I cheered when I noticed that the explosion had blasted us directly into Heero's room.

"Get ready, man," with that order, Duo left his hiding space and hurried over to help him undo his fastenings. I did the same and pulled the jackknife out of my boot and began sawing through the leather and metal bindings.

"Damn it, how do I get these undone?" I demanded, frustrated.

"Just give me the knife, I can do it," said Heero, already reaching out for it, blood from his torn arm dripping and coating his hand.

"Hey, you're arm!" Duo cried when he noticed Heero had managed to free himself of the restraints. "What a guy…"

"Don't start singing him praises yet," was my grunted reply as I passed him the knife. Heero leaned over and cut the bindings of his other arm in one swift movement, before sitting up and going to work on his legs. My hands were coated in his blood at this point, but there was no time to wipe it as Duo thrust Heero a parachute pack and readied his paracopter.

The three of us ran through the small corridors, which were flooding with water from the ceiling. The explosion had obviously set off the fire alarm and water systems. Despite his wounds, Heero could run, faster than both Duo and I. Behind me, Duo tossed a bomb at the window, shattering the glass and stone without even a pause.

I jumped first, pulling the chord to activate the parachute. I threw my head backwards to see how the guys had faired; Duo had activated his paracopter, but Heero seemed to have ignored his chute and was freefalling downwards.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Duo yelled as we floated down, slightly higher in the air as I was. My eyes were glued on Heero, who was getting closer and closer to the ground. The sick feeling began to double itself and I nearly let go of my chute.

"Heero!"

Mine wasn't the only voice that screamed his name – I picked up the slowly receding tones of Relena Darlian from far above me, sounding beyond panicked. To my amazement, Heero appeared to awaken from whatever daze he had been in and activated the parachute. I began to breathe a sigh of relief as I floated close to the ground, when I realized that it had been too late for him to pull the cord.

He fell to the ground beneath us with a sickening thud, before rolling off of the cliff and down onto the beach. He didn't get up.

"_Mein_ _Gott_," I choked, gripping the cords tightly. Above me, Duo swore loudly. I didn't bother to wait to hit the ground. I was fighting my way out of the harness and at ten feet up I managed to free myself and land in a crouched position, nearly falling over in shock when I watched Heero move, then stand up and brush himself off. His right leg hung at an unnatural angle, but I didn't much care at the moment. He had survived freefalling fifty stories, as well as a roll over a cliff that had to be about a hundred.

He should have been dead.

"Heero…"

I ran forward, numbly registering Duo touching down behind me as I got close to Heero.

"I…What am I doing alive?" he asked himself, looking almost dazed. I tried to get him to use me as a crutch, but he jerked away from me. As though by reflex I lashed out, smashing my fist into his jaw and actually making him stagger.

"_Verdammtenn Idiot! Bisst Du wahnsinig, oder was?"_ I was screaming curses at him and I didn't know why, and I kept hitting him despite his injuries. Looking back now, I realize it was because I didn't know how else to express myself. I had never experienced what normal people had – joy, fear, anger, frustration. When I did, I remained close-lipped and stoic, almost like Heero – if I had remained on L3 I probably would have been more far gone than Heero. For the first time I was experiencing not just the dead emotion of being worried for a mission gone wrong, but I was worried and terrified for Heero. Instead of expressing it like a normal girl of thirteen might, I was trying to beat it out of Heero.

It was Duo that stopped me, although Heero didn't look as though he could even feel my blows, pulled me back and smacked me soundly in the face. The stinging pain in my cheeks awoke me from whatever I had just experienced and I stared up in time to hear Duo speaking to Heero, taking his bleeding arm over his shoulder. "I know you'd rather die," he was saying, looking bewildered at the fact that Heero was still alive, "but if you couldn't after all of that, you'd better come up with a really good way to kill yourself. I know it may sound lame to both of you, but all you guys can do right now is trust me. I'm the only friend that you have in the world."

I couldn't reply, even as I followed the two boys off and away from the hospital.

(-)

Duo's safe haven was located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a rather large aircraft carrier that was manned by a mobile suit mechanics crew. They greeted Duo heartily and it took me a few moments to realize that these men, even though they were from Earth, were sympathetic to the plight of the colonies and were rebels working under cover of the Alliance. It was a little amusing to realize that the Alliance's biggest threat was being housed in b its own military personnel.

We had stopped in the forest near St-Gabriels to retrieve my suit. Duo had taken one look at her and proclaimed her a 'heap' that wasn't worth picking up. I had to resort to threats and a bribe to get him to actually load her up and take her with us.

"This piece of crap is slowing us down, you know," he told me, unimpressed.

"Excuse me, but that 'piece of crap' took me three years to build," I snapped.

"Yeah, I can see that," he snorted. "It's a piece of junk. Where'd you salvage those parts from – retired Leo models?"

I didn't answer him. I wasn't going to tell him that he was right.

Later, while Duo sat inside of a crane trying to maneuver the sunken Wing gundam from the Ocean floor, I studied Hades, who stood by in a hanger, for the first time seeing all of the flaws. Her face was completely torn in from what I could see and I also noticed the panel breakage and strained gears and joints.

Why had I thought she was any good or strong enough to go into battle? She looked as though she had suffered a major malfunction and self-destructed! It was a miracle that I had gotten her this far in one piece!

Unless I wanted to die in battle (and not in the glorious way) I was going to have to do some serious work, both inside and out.

Duo's gundam, which I had heard him call 'Deathscythe' lay nearby on the ground of the carrier ship. It was a beautiful, slick mass of gundanium, all the panels new and sturdy, state-of-the-art weapons and exoskeleton. Even though I had never seen it in battle, I had an idea that it was a force to be reckoned with.

"There you go – all yours!" Duo's call brought me back to reality and I watched him jump out of the crane, surveying his work smugly. When he received blank looks from both Heero and myself, he made a face. "Come on – show me a little appreciation!"

"Neither of us has killed you yet," I pointed out.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Cute."

"That's what I am."

We glared at each other for a moment, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by Heero, who was rolling around on the floor, gripping his thigh so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.

I had seen earlier just by looking that he was severely injured despite the fact that he was moving around. At a glance I figured the damage to be substantial, including strained ribs, internal bruising and possibly hemorrhaging. He was still bleeding from his torn hand as well as a gash beneath his hairline, possibly from the glass of the hospital window. More than that I didn't know, because Heero would never have let me examine him and at the moment, I was still too angry at him to offer help.

And of course, there was the matter of his leg, which was broken.

The right femur was suffering from a compound fracture, where it had broken through the skin. Ordinarily, to have it fixed Heero would have had to undergo a serious surgery and have an intramedullary rod inserted into the center of the thigh bone to reconnect everything.

Heero, being Heero, went with a different option.

"What are you doing?" Duo asked, looking annoyed and apprehensive as Heero hobbled around, rolling back and forth as he gripped the broken bone between his hands. With a sudden jerk and an audible crack, he snapped the bone back into place and proceeded to bandage it up with some gauze he had taken from a first aid kit.

"Nasty!" Duo cried agitatedly, looking away. "Who treats his own broken bones! Man, you're really screwed up, you know that?"

Heero didn't reply, too busy bandaging his wounds and testing for any immediate damage.

"Ugh…I think I'm going to lose my lunch," the other boy groaned. He actually looked pale beneath his long bangs. I remember feeling a bitter amusement at the fact that this boy could kill people every day but still manage to get sick around someone setting their own bones. I debated with myself for a while, whose company I would rather be in for the time being and then decided to stay with the evil I knew than the evil I didn't.

So I picked up another roll of bandages from the case nearby and sat in front of Heero. For a moment we just looked at each other without words, before I leaned forward, pulling apart the roll. "Let me help."

"I don't require your assistance," he muttered tersely, and pulled away from me.

"Bullshit. Your hands are raw with blood; you'd be injuring yourself further and getting the bandages dirty – you're already at risk for infection," I told him, appealing to his sense of the mission.

"Yours are also bloody," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's not my blood on them."

We looked at each other again silently, the ambiguous words hanging over us like a dark cloud. After the longest moment, I reached forward again and began to bandage his leg tightly, and this time he didn't push me away.

* * *

TBC 


	6. Chapter Five

_**Child Soldiers**  
by KuriQuinn _

* * *

Chapter Five: Entrapment  
(April 11th, AC 195 – April 13th, 195)

I learned very quickly that I had made a good decision by staying around Heero. Although our newest _Anhänger_ was the cheerful sort and had at first acted helpful and friendly, I discovered that now that I was used to seeing him, I was beginning to notice the cold shoulder he constantly gave me.

I wasn't used to this treatment from anyone so I thought I was imagining it. I would have asked Heero if he had noticed anything if it hadn't been for the fact that Heero was – well, Heero – and couldn't have cared less considering it had nothing to do with the mission.

When he caught me watching him, Duo's eyes would turn icy, almost the way I was sure he appeared during battle. Those dark eyes held a murderer's gaze and even though, as a gundam pilot, he might very well be an ally, I couldn't forget that this boy was a cold-blooded killer. Just like myself and Heero.

I tried to overlook the general sentiment of anger that was being directed at me, maintaining that sooner or later we would be going out separate ways and I'd probably not see the braided baka ever again. In fact, every minute we could, Heero and I were working on our suits to get away from the foreign environment we had been introduced to. People generally steered clear of the area where Wing and a very decrepit Hades rested, mostly due to Heero's deadly glares. I had to admit, even though it was all he could do, it was effective.

While Heero avoided everyone, I followed the mechanics around like a dog, asking them questions about my suit and mobile suits in general. I wanted to know everything I could that would assist me in the future, specifically for touchups and eventually to upgrade Hades to a more passable model. I could tell that after five straight hours of doing this, the guys were getting a little tired of me, but I really didn't care.

The day after we arrived on the carrier Heero received his first mission from Dr. J. We had just done a scan of his gundam for lethal breakage and discovered that the insulation had dropped to two-thousand eight hundred and the coolant systems were completely out of whack. Not to mention his shields had been greatly damaged upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere.

Duo was ever yelling at us from the ground to allow his people to fix our suits, but Heero ignored him while I just laughed. I had never encountered someone actually trying to help and for this reason distrusted them. Heero was the same – or he just had that innate, male sense of not wanting outside interference with anything. It would explain my many near-death-experiences when I tried to give him a hand.

When it became clear to us that Duo was not going to leave and be silent, Heero momentarily glanced down at the boy, as though evaluating his importance, and then returned his attention back at his computer screen which was still running diagnostics.

"I don't want anyone touching my suit – it's that simple."

"Dude, you need to learn a little thing called 'trust'," Duo snorted as he began to climb towards us on Wing's leg panel with obvious effort. His face was red and he was sweating a little by the time he joined us.

"I don't trust anyone. I only rely on myself," Heero replied flatly, his eyes not moving from the screen.

"Yeah, I'm so surprised," Duo shot back sarcastically. "Never could have guessed that by looking at you." He leaned over Heero, casting a shadow over him that I noticed made him frown. "Come on, you don't have any replacement parts. No matter how good an engineer you are, without parts there's no way you can repair this. Machines aren't like your broken bones, you know…" He eyed Heero's bandaged leg warily, as though the bone would suddenly pop out again at any second.

I did have to give him points for attempting. The way he attempted to coax Heero into speaking or reacting to him reminded me of myself. Especially when he grew extremely annoyed and began to make faces at Heero, including sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes – like me, he learned the hard way why you don't make faces at Heero, because Heero has very good reflexes

A lot of yelling and a probably bruised tongue later, Duo kept his distance from my stoic former partner, cradling his mouth and staring angrily.

"I saved this guys life," I heard him mumble to himself. "What was I thinking? Antisocial, uncooperative, unpredictable…God, I hate this guy! If I were you man, I'd hate my personality so much that I'd shoot myself."

"Not the way he's programmed," I snorted. I made a mocking impression of Heero, complete with the glower and flat tone of voice. "I cannot self-terminate unless it is part of my mission."

Duo laughed out loud, and then hastily stopped himself, scowling at me from the corner of his eye. It suddenly occurred that for some reason, he didn't like me; this fact was going against his inherently cheerful nature. I didn't know what it was, but there had to be a reason for this. I intended to asked him about it the first chance that I got.

"Will you both shut up?" Heero's voice was quiet but it managed to sober the two of us better than if he had yelled it.

"Wow, we managed to get a reaction out of him," I scoffed. "That's the first time in five years, _Hyouchuu_. I think you must be getting weaker."

If a glare could kill, I'd probably have been dead at that moment. Heero didn't like to have anyone question his strength and abilities, even if it was a joke or teasing from me.

I was saved from finding out if he was in the mood to kill me when an alarm went off in Heero's gundam. He hurriedly leapt down from the breast plate of Wing and sat back in the cockpit, the eerie glow of the encrypted message on the monitor washing over his face. As we followed and leaned over him, we could see his eyes riveting back and forth without pause.

"What's going on?" I questioned, skeptical as to whether he would tell me anything more than the barest details.

"New mission," he grunted in reply. "The enemy will be transporting gundanium alloy – mission accepted. I will intercept it tomorrow morning."

"And return to the school after?"

I doubted that he would, bearing in mind that our cover was blown by Relena still being alive, but I needed to know what his plans were. Although I didn't want to admit it, my involvement in Operation Meteor was dependant on Heero's. Even though he was no longer participating in the mass murder that it had originally been, I could not afford to be too close or too far from Heero's confidences.

Getting too close would jeopardize his mission, especially if someone like me was caught in coalition with the gundam pilots – I could be used as an example, after all, I was painted as a dangerous fugitive on the colonies. Not being involved, though, could be equally as damaging not only to my purpose here on earth but ultimately leading me to make crucial mistakes that might ruin everything those fighting for peace were working for.

"_Iie_," Heero didn't answer me other than that, and even if he had wanted to, Duo interrupted,

"How the hell are you going to intercept anything with this worn-out piece of junk?"

Heero didn't answer him and promptly deleted the message. Duo understood the less than subtle rebuke and retreated, none-too-pleased. "Yeah, whatever – you're right again, as usual."

I watched him go, guilty for a second. Because of our less than favorable first impression and the fact that he didn't appear to like me all that much, I found myself determined to get along with Duo. It might be better for someone in my position to have an ally that didn't treat me like an expendable tool. I already had Heero for that.

"You know…he's only trying to help – and unless you've run a simulation on how to get parts for a rare, one-of-a-kind mobile suit in time for an aerial sweep mission, you're going to need it."

"I don't need him," Heero said shortly, sounding a little absent. I took this as him calculating his next move in his head, "but I do need your larceny skills."

I turned to face him, surprise evident in my features. This was the closest Heero had ever come to asking me for assistance. Not even when we had worked together on the colonies had he acknowledged me as anything other than competition, and inferior at that.

I wasn't going to pass over the opportunity to show my worth. The problem of Duo Maxwell would have to wait until later.

I grinned and leaned in closer. "Care to let me in on the plan?"

(-)

Although it had been Heero's idea to steal the parts from Duo's gundam, it was mine to take only what we absolutely needed. I was still conscious of his dislike for me and didn't want to increase it by too much. I volunteered parts that I managed to salvage from the Hades wreck, figuring that I wasn't going to be getting off the ground any time soon.

The only things of real importance to Heero were the engine, fuel cells, gyros and gas. Most of those things were shot in Hades, so after everyone went to bed that night, we took them from Duo's suit. The hardest thing was dismantling and rebuilding the engine, which Heero did while I worked on the fuel cells and gyros.

It took us the entire night, and I was tired as hell the next morning, but was able to watch Heero get into the cockpit and gun the motor, ready for takeoff.

"What the hell?" Duo's voice, still laced with sleep behind me, was filled with admiration. "I can't believe this! What a team! You guys fixed that heap of junk in one night! I'll be damned…"

"Yeah, you will be," I yawned. "I'm going to sleep now…"

I knew Duo wouldn't be impressed when he realized how we repaired everything, and I didn't want to be around when it happened. Of course, fate being what it was, moments later there was a loud yell from one of the mechanics and quite a few angry curses, before someone called, "They got us! They stole the parts from your machine!"

"What – my parts – you – !"

I managed to duck the fist he swung in my direction, as well as the sloppy kick to my face, but I neglected to count on the upper-cut and found myself winded and backed against a wall. In my sleep deprived state he was gaining momentum at an unnatural rate.

"You sons of bitches, what the fu – !"

"No one said you had to trust us," I grunted, dipping out of the way and kicking his legs out from under him, making him fall to the ground with a smack, his head hitting the concrete. For a second he didn't move, his eyes going unfocused, before he sent me a dirty look.

"Ya didn't have to steal the parts from my suit," he was really angry now, reaching and rubbing the back of his head. For a moment the image of an angry Kid scowling at me melded with Duo and I paused for a second.

A second too long, apparently, because he was on his feet and swinging at me again. Idodged out of the way, expanding the distance between us and clambering over Deathscythe. I don't know when it became more a game to me; I knew that Duo really had been pissed off and probably still wanted to kill Heero and I, but all of a sudden I found myself laughing out loud, dodging him more out on a whim than actual necessity.

Whatever it was ended soon, because Duo stopped and proclaimed that I was just wasting his time and backed off. Incensed that he had accused me of such a thing I tailed him, demanding that he take it back and was surprised by a patronizing cuff to the head.

"It's not nice for you to do that kind of thing," he told me condescendingly, obviously enjoying the reaction it received since I went to hit him once more. How dare he treat me like a child, he was doing exactly what Heero did!

Again he took no notice of me and eventually I gave up, figuring I shouldn't bother dealing with him. I wandered around the carrier for an hour or so, bored out of my mind but unable to think of anything to do. With Hades put even further out of commission because of my 'generous' donations to Heero I was stuck here until I could either fix her or barter passage off. Nobody really liked me at the moment, so I doubted either option was very credible.

I avoided the people when I could. For the first day I did nothing but sit in Hades' decrepit cockpit, making and effort to assess the damage and think of new modifications. Even if I couldn't convince Duo's people to aid me in rebuilding her or provide me with material, the scrap metal that had there was of much better stock than what had been on the colonies. I'd still be able to build a better model.

Fed up with my own suit, I hacked through Duo's security system for Deathscythe. It was despairingly easy and I had to remind myself that not everyone was as paranoid or computer literate as Heero was. I wouldn't be able to crack Heero's encryptions and security codes unless I had a week and a lot of coffee. But Duo's only required a password, which I managed on the first attempt: _Solo_.

Bringing up data files and diagrams of the suit, I was surprised to see that the original outline and schematic maps for Deathscythe were practically identical to the ones that Wing and Hades had been built according to. They used identical dimensions and suspension materials, as well as framework. These increasingly noticeable similarities could only mean that we were on the same side, sent out by a similar type of organization.

But then, why hadn't J told me about this when I had confronted him? Unless he hadn't decided by then to change the parameters of the mission. He probably hadn't known that one of his previous organizations or even current side organizations was still planning on carrying out the mission – or maybe he had? The only question left was, whether Duo's people were intent on the original Operation M or a spin off, like what Heero and I were doing?

'No, he's working with Alliance turncoats,' I reminded myself as I tapped into the weapons and artillery features on his gundam. 'And after what the Alliance used to do to people on L2, there's no way he'd join in a massacre.' I glanced at the scanning list of weapons. 'Hyper-jammers – that would give him an edge. Especially with that scythe.'

A three dimensional model and cross-section played on screen and I glanced at the mechanical frame-work. "Built for speed, huh?" I scoffed. "Not as fast as Hades is." I remembered the decrepit state of my suit. "Or at least, theoretically not as fast as Hades is…"

When the parts came for Duo's gundam, I felt the need to lend a hand to him and his mechanics to replace them. Part of this was the guilt for having facilitated their theft in the first place. The other part was that I had questions that needed to be answered by Duo.

Apparently, so did he.

"It's the second micro panel on the bottom right," he said casually, leaning over me as I fiddled with a screw driver and a few wires. I had never been good with adjusting or fixing devices. I even failed the explosive diffusion tests that Dr. J had Heero and I partake in years earlier. And that had been before I discovered my blindness. "There's probably a short in the binary latitude adjusters. Here," he handed me a laser solder, "section it off and then connect it to the trilateral booster module."

I stared at the tool and then at him, before frowning, "Are you sick or something?"

"No, I just don't want you to screw that badly with my suit," he snorted, watching me beadily as though to make sure I was doing as he suggested. I didn't know what I was doing, but after following the order, there was a low hum and he nodded, appeased. Apparently I had done something right.

There was a silence and I glanced over at him, noticing the way he was peering at me calculatingly. "What?"

"So what's a no-talent like you doing on this mission?" he asked me casually.

I straightened my posture, arms crossed. "No-talent?"

"I mean, not much apparently," he said as he gazed past Deathscythe to the wreck that was my gundam. "Obviously whoever's running the show on your end couldn't meet the budget when it came to your suit."

"The only one running the show is me," I snapped. "I didn't have any of the fancy gadgets that you guys had, because I didn't have funding from some mad rebel scientist. I built her inside-out without any help and yes, she's a piece of junk, but she functions and once I replace the parts and buffer them a little, she'll be on par with any of your machines."

"You built her?" he repeated as though he would never have come to that conclusion. He glanced up and down my suit, and then he smirked. "Ah. Well. Like I said; no-talent."

I could tell immediately that he wanted to figure out my abilities and history; maybe he wanted to confirm who I was. Maybe he already knew. I knew that was the situation and responded accordingly, leveling with him as much as I could afford. "No talent, huh?" I pursed my lips.

A million different ways of taking his attempt to insult me rattled through my brain and I finally managed to settle on one that probably wouldn't lead to me angrily blurting out everything I knew about him and blowing my cover at the same time. "And you're basing this on what?"

He was obviously surprised at my chosen response and then grinned, ceding to the game. "Based on everything I've seen of you and your abilities in the past four days." I waited expectantly for him to elaborate, which he did. "You say you're the best and better than everyone on your own, but you've spent every second from when I met you to this morning with that guy getting him whatever he needed. You can't fix or build worth shit and your fighting stinks. You obviously haven't been getting any missions from anyone which makes me think you're not even part of this operation. Oh, and you've been pestering the mechanics over questions that any idiot should know and they're getting a little tired of it."

He grinned at me winningly, as though he had put forth his case with smashing good sense. I regarded him coolly and then asked, "Is that it?"

He appeared doubtful for a second.

"Alright, Maxwell, let me enlighten you," I said quietly. "That way we can be no-talents together, alright? I stuck with Heero because, believe it or not, he's the closest thing to even resembling a family that I've ever had. I've known him longer than anyone in my life – second of all, this is my first time doing something this big on my own without some cracked-out guy in a white lab coat calling the shots. Obviously I'm not a mastermind but I learn quickly.

"Third – I don't fight you the way I want to because I don't want you dead yet. No, I haven't been getting missions because I assigned myself to this mission and screw you, I'll pester whoever I damn well want if I want to get information."

I took a deep breath and then continued, noticing the expression on his face becoming steadily grimmer.

"Now, let's compare, shall we? Since I met you, you've shot a guy three different times and he's still alive. You attempted to steal another state**-**of**-**the**-**art weapon**-**of**-**mass**-**destruction in addition to your own and failed and had to go back and try again – and failed again. You trusted two people that you know nothing about during a _war _and figured you wouldn't get burned. You then trusted one of the same people to fix your suit even though you probably already noticed I'm not very adept with mechanics.

"Also, I find that you spend more time measuring exactly four and one half tablespoons of sugar into your morning coffee and memorizing twenty-first century rock music lyrics than you do making an effort to maintain all of that junk you've got plugged under the plates of your suit."

He was silent a lot longer this time. He opened his mouth and then closed it again, before repeating the action at least three more times. Finally he asked suspiciously, "How do you know it's exactly four and a half tablespoons?"

"Because I watched you and I have a good memory," I snorted.

We regarded each other warily for a moment, and then he shrugged. "Whatever – you're still a no talent. And for the record – you're too conspicuous to be a pilot."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I challenged, angered again by his words.

"It means someone like you draws too much attention to a secret mission like this," he replied, reaching forward and tugging on my hair. I recognized the insult to my appearance and gender at the same time and was about to comment on how he looked more like a girl than I did, but he had already stalked off toward the exit of the hanger. Before he left, he stopped again without turning around. I could barely hear his voice, "Oh, and next time you decide to snoop around in my shit? Don't."

There was a sudden explosion of sound that echoed all the way through the hangar. At first I thought it was one of the engines firing to life, but when my brain finally recognized the fact that none of the engines were even close to being turned on, I realized it was actually a human voice rumbling in the echoing hangar. After a pause where I noticed Duo tense near me, it happened again. This time, though, I could make out the words.

"MAXWELL!"

The owner of the voice was barreling down the aisles towards us, her gaze fixed on the pilot next to me. It appeared that the tide had decided to bring another new face into my world, one that I would come to value greatly for the rest of my life.

She was a good deal shorter than myself and Duo, and a good deal skinnier, although unlike me, this was probably because of genetics and not because of near starvation. Her hair was dark like Heero's and when she appeared face to face with us I was surprised at how much they actually looked alike, even if her features were more feminine and somehow less Asian in quality. If I hadn't known the mathematical probability of a possible relationship, I might have mistaken her for his sister or maybe even a close cousin.

When she finally reached us, she didn't bother with pleasantries, but jabbed a finger into Duo's chest and yelled in an accented voice, "What the hell did I tell you! Didn't I say if you caused any more unnecessary work or screwed up any more goddamned parts that I'd kill you? Didn't I make it _perfectly_ clear that you were to come right back here after salvaging Deathscythe?"

"I don't know what you're so worried about," Duo mumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets and staring at the ground like a chastised child. "Remember the mission specs? Everything's expendable in the pursuit of peac – "

"I don't give a damn about peace, you dickhead, you just cost me this month's rent!" her face turned red with anger and her voice increased in volume. "What the hell was the big idea of trying to steal another suit? We're in a war, man, there's no time to be greedy! Especially when you already have one hell of a fecking suit in your grasp – and you can't even take care of that one properly! You got nicked from!"

My fellow pilot rolled his eyes at her, "Come on, Dice, that wasn't my fault, and – "

"And you!" I was so shocked when she rounded on me that I took half a step backward. "What's your deal, Little Red Riding Hood? Rule number one – you don't steal from a comrade! Didn't you get the bloody memo! And don't give me that '_I didn't know_' bullshit! You may have an eidetic memory, but you're a damned selfish fool!"

I couldn't keep from stammering, "H-how did you know…?"

"I know everything," she snapped sharply, taking in my appearance. Her eyes fell on the ragged Alliance uniform in disdain. "And I'm completely disgusted with both of you."

"Hold it," I interrupted, raising a hand in front of me as though to separate me from her. "Who are you?"

She blinked, as though stopped in mid-rant, and then cleared her throat. "Right…you don't know me yet. Forgot it was you." She tossed her long hair over her shoulder and shoved her hand right out right in front of her. "Name's Shayne Medican – I'm a, er, supplier of sorts – I work for Howard."

I narrowed my eyes. "Well then if you're a supplier you know that I have nothing to do with the organization that sent the braided baka over here and everyone else for that matter."

"Everyone else?" Duo was confused. Shayne, on the other hand, was amused.

"What makes you think that there's anyone else but you three?"

I narrowed my eyes, wondering and quite sure that she was testing me.

"The day my former partner arrived there were four other so-called meteors and two days ago I saw handful of classified files, including satellite photos, belonging to Vice Foreign Minister Darlian to confirm the presence of more than one other gundam. Also, on April 7th a military base in Guam was destroyed, the only clue was a strange suit. April 8th, the Indus Supplement Base rumored to be under OZ occupation was blown up. The same day the Corsica base was reduced to ruins by two mobile suits and in the Americas a military town is now a bunch of rubble. The style of all these attacks points to a joint effort or different machines with the same objective."

"See? I told you that you knew," she smirked, "Don't play dumb with me anymore, because we have you all figured out."

"Who's this 'we' you're talking about?" I demanded. My first impression of this girl was so far not a favorable one. At my question she grinned at me and turned to Duo.

"Maxwell, check your CPU – there's a message there and I think you're up for another mission – good thing you ordered those parts when you did or you'd be sitting this one out."

Duo blinked, "When did you have time to – and how did you – huh - ?"

"Sibs," Shayne said, as though the one word explained everything. Duo apparently understood what it meant but I, on the other hand, was completely at sea. It was like my mind had been thrown into a whirlpool and was being washed about like some waif-like rag-doll. "Anyway, get your ass over their and figure out what your next move is – Red Riding Hood and I'll get to work on her ball of shite soon enough."

I frowned, "Why do you keep calling me that? What's a Red-Riding-Hood?"

To my surprise, _both_ Shayne and Duo gaped at me in a mixture of disgust and pity. My face colored, and I suddenly pictured myself as the most simpleminded person in the solar system. The instant passed and I glared defiantly, "And that 'ball of shite' took me a while to build, so give me some credit!"

"I'll give you some credit," Shayne said quietly leaning forward and staring at me appraisingly. She paused suddenly, a peculiar expression on her face before she groaned, "Ugh, after we bathe you – you reek! When was the last time you washed, man?"

I stared, honestly making an effort to remember. The last few days had happened in such a rapid-fire that my time at St-Gabriel's was very far away. I had been so focused on finding out all I could about the events of the world, working on my gundam and dealing with the newcomer, Duo, that I had barely slept, eaten or bathed.

The Shayne girl was waiting for my response and mortified, I answered, "A few days ago I guess."

She acted like I had just pulled out a gun and shot her point-blank.

"Bollocks! That won't do," she cried, seizing my hand and dragging me away from Deathscythe and Duo, towards the entrance of the hangar. I couldn't wrench myself from her grip, which was almost as vice like as Heero's, "Maxwell, you pick up here – I'm bringing her to the showers to get her cleaned – and no peekin' or I'll turn you inside out!"

Although I tried to protest, saying there were other, more important things on the line than hygiene, I learned quite early that arguing with Shayne was futile. Once she had decided something for me or anyone, it would be carried out or she'd die in the attempt.

(-)

The first shower that I took in four days was the most heavenly experience of my young life. For the two and a half days that I had attended St-Gabriel's I had come to enjoy the long hot showers that I was allowed to take. When I had been with J's organization everything had been timed and on a strict schedule and when I had existed on my own, I'd never really given it thought.

For some reason, as I washed the grime and the blood from my skin, I believed that I was also washing away the truth of the world that I lived in. Sins, troubles, pain could all be taken care of by water.

Shayne had booted the men out of one of the shower areas—an impressive feat bearing in mind the large majority of people on the carrier were male—practically threw me into the cheaply tiled room and then turned on the searing hot water. I didn't find out until much later, but Shayne had an unholy fear of lice, which explained her diehard attitude when it came to cleanliness – hers or anyone else's.

Only after she was satisfied that I was clean (Shayne had been seconds away from pouring kerosene on my head to make sure that if there was by some off-chance a threat of lice they would not live to see the light of day) was I allowed to come out of the showers. Unfortunately I had to slip back into the only rags that I owned, as there were no other clothes that would fit me.

It was amazing that Duo hadn't shot me directly the first time that he saw me wearing these, I thought as I pulled on the frayed khaki uniform shirt, the Alliance insignia glaring at me – the choice of garb was not mine. The clothing that the resistance complex had once provided me with had long since stopped being supplied to me – most of the rags I had owned afterwards I pillaged from the dumpsters.

"So tell me again – who exactly are you?" I asked Shayne as I finally got out of the showers, toweling my hair dry and staring at her calculatingly. "And who's Howard?"

"What's the point of telling you anything?" she directed my way with a saucy stare, "you're going to be leaving here any day now and if you don't already know Howard, why add another name to that already over-informed brain of yours?"

My eyes narrowed, for this was her second reference to my cognitive abilities, a hint that this girl that I understood nothing about was familiar with so much about me. "How do you know about that?"

"How do you think everyone else does?"

The wanted posters circulating the colonies, of course.

She was beginning to annoy me. "Is it a habit of yours to answer a question with a question?"

"Well, between answering with a straight answer and getting more questions or answering with another question and eventually tiring the other person out, what would you do?" Her grin was so wide for a second I wondered if she and Duo might be the ones related instead. But she had a point – I was known to employ the same diversionary tactic when it came to giving information.

I shrugged, forcing myself not to petulantly insist on an answer to my previous inquiries. I would find out on my own later, I had no problem with a little work. "Fine, don't tell me who you are – just tell me why the heck I should bother listening to anything you say?"

Shayne **looked** like she was contemplating me, and then a moment later laughed and sat down on one of the benches in the locker area, pulling in her knees lotus style, resting her chin in her hands. "Tell you what, Red Riding Hood, I'll tell you a few things and it'll be up to you to judge whether I'm telling you the truth or not, alright? And because I know you don't trust me, how's about I start?"

"Fine."

I leaned back against the grimy wall and waited for her to speak. Her lips were pursed for a moment, eyes half-lidded. She looked like she was thinking of what she should start off by saying. After another moment of silence she nodded to herself and cleared her throat, "Like I already told you, the name's Shayne – I'm a kind of Jill-of-All-Trades type – MS repair and mechanics, mostly for pretty good figures and I'm a decent pilot."

"Duo called you Dice."

She shrugged, "Dice is what my friends call me – not that someone like you can afford friends, but I'll let you – besides, Dice is a more war friendly name. If people think I'm a guy, I get paid better.I don't get it, but for some reason; moron MS pilots don't want to accept that a chick can actually fix stuff." She uncurled her position a little and peered directly at me, "So was that what you wanted to know?"

"Who do you work for?"

"I told you, I work for Howard," she rolled her eyes at me, giving the impression that she was patiently explaining it to a hard-of-hearing child. I didn't react to the calm and casual brush-off, having expected it from her and merely gazed back stonily. "Are you deaf or something?"

"No, and I'm not stupid either," I replied. My entire body tensed suddenly, my stomach clenching into a knot. There was something utterly unsettling about Shayne, I realized; something that I hadn't experienced in a long time. "You haven't been completely honest with everyone."

"And you have?" she raised an eyebrow, half-amused, half-guarded. "If you're so bloody perfect than you should be able to figure me out no-sweat, instead of asking me half-baked questions that you already know the answers to."

A challenge; she wanted to see what I could do. I crossed my arms at her, my pride finally beginning to boil over. "Fine – I've seen enough to get the gist of you."

She made a gesture with her hands as though inviting me to continue and I did, scowling at her all the while. In truth, I was only now working out the information in my head, the connections happening so fast I was getting a headache.

"Working on parts for the gundams means you must have pretty good connections to the people who first built and designed them – but you're in everything for money. Mercenaries are not valued by the organization I came from, and by default I'd guess it's the same for the organizations the other pilots come from," I told her plainly, waiting to see her reaction. "You know a lot about me and have no problem telling me – it's like you're holding it over my head – so obviously you've spent enough time on the colonies. You could have formed a recycled opinion about me – you know enough about everyone else that you're not surprised, but you're keeping the information to yourself which suggests it might be of personal use to you at a later point. Ulterior motives aren't needed in a rebel organizations, it's more the motive of private associations.

"You keep mentioning a 'we' which indicates you're loyalties – where I come from, people wouldn't acknowledge they work for a group of people unless it's something with perks. You don't give direct answers, indicating you have something to hide. Lately the only people that have anything to hide are OZ or members of the DA – the DA always goes places with pomp and circumstances as an official organization while OZ is underhanded and corrupt. The only substantial need for MS repair is with the Alliance Forces and Alliance Specials – in other words, OZ. Finally, mechanics that fetch a good price are usually recruited to OZ specials."

Shayne smirked at me. "Well, now that you're so sure that I'm OZ, wouldn't I have had time to shoot you in the minute and twelve seconds that you just took to tell me who I am?"

"I don't know, would it be beneficial to you? You're obviously working as a double agent."

"Touché."

The two of us watched one another for a long time, sizingthe other up. Shayne's expression was that of an over-confident and comfortable veteran of such an incident, while I was aggravated and uneasy. The presence of someone so close to either side meant the tip of the balance – if she chose to favor one side, it might mean victory or defeat for myself and any additional gundams based on her proximity to either side. And she knew it.

"Give me a reason not to shoot you now."

"Other than the fact that I took the precaution to get rid of your gun before you washed?"

"If you know anything about me, you should know that I could kill you without it."

"I know and respect it, mate," she sighed, leaning back against the wall now as well, a somewhat weary expression appearing on her face, "Just like you should know that I have a few other people in my confidences and if I die or go missing, they'll go to the proper authority 'bout you. _Comprende?_"

Silence. Stalemate.

I had met someone who was a match for my own attitude and mind games, and at the time, I didn't like it. I jutted out my lower lip and sneered at her as I passed, pretending to seem off-hand and careless, "Go ahead, see what I care."

All I heard as I left was her laughing.

* * *

Heh, Shayne and Lils get off to a little bit of a rocky start, but a lot of that is on account of Lilya's immaturity. She doesn't like anyone in the beginning and unlike Heero, tells them straight out…

That's it for now. This was a hard chapter for me because I'm trying to focus on my novel but also trying to balance Updates will become sporadic over the next few months, but I am trying – I've decided that I'll try to write a chapter of something every day and once I get both my betas in sync with my work I'll be able to produce chapters at a better rate. But until then, sporadic c'est moi!

_**DISCLAIMER: Shayne belongs to my best friend Meg and I'm writing her in accordance with the bio that she sent me. However, Meg's newest version of Shayne is Saith. It was getting too confusing for me to keep writing Saith, so I stuck to the Shayne that I and veteran readers know and love. That and her character will be further explained in one of the later chapters…**_

R&R

Kuriness


	7. Chapter Six

_**Child Soldiers**  
by KuriQuinn _

* * *

Chapter Six: Comrade   
(April 13th, AC 195 – May 10th, 195) 

"What do you mean, the Vice Foreign Minister's been assassinated!"

"Exactly what I said," Shayne replied, taking a loud sip of coffee. Even outside, the scent reached me at a faster and stronger rate than normal. "Our informants have told us that OZ has claimed responsibility for the act, even though to the public they're chief advocate has gone on television and on the military channels to say it was a rebel colonist or some other rot – excellent cover considering anti-colonist sentiment is running rampant right about now. The Dutchner Association isn't exactly helping the image – they've increased production of arms since that assassination."

"Why am I not surprised," I sighed loudly, leaning back against the outer wall of the carrier. The night was crisp and from what I could hear inside, most of the mechanic were finishing up their work and turning in. Duo was gone; he had left for a mission earlier that day and not returned yet, which led me to believe that it was either a complicated task that he had been assigned to or he had been killed.

"Tobias Dutchner is refusing to comment on it, but there are certain L3 colonists that are questioning his motives and alliance – a lot of them are also blaming him for the decrepit state of the colonies. They say he spends too many resources trying to locate that Adler kid than keep up peace or the appearance of peace on the colonies," Shayne stared up at the overcast sky. I couldn't see her expression, but the tone in her voice suggested some underlying motive.

I pretended I couldn't pick up on it and instead glanced out into the darkness ahead of me. Everything was pitch black, an empty nothingness that I was used to. The air smelled heavy, like fog and even without my eyes I could tell that the weather was the calm after the storm. For the first time in months I had been caught off-guard by the blind spell and needed an hour or two to collect myself.

Shayne was obviously not in the mood to beat around the bush. "Since Darlian's assassination I think it's a good idea if you put some more effort into this whole operation – specifically when it comes to the DA."

I shot a practiced piercing look in her direction. "Why's that?"

"Well, you know how these people operate, I'm sure," she replied smoothly and I could hear her shifting slightly from her position. "Which is why you're better suited than all the others for this particular mission. And besides – you were the one that decided to come here all by yourself without a plan. I figure, now you have an actual reason to be on Earth."

I was not in the mood for Shayne's mocking. "Gee, thanks."

"No problem – which is why some of those parts in there are for you. I'm sure you can figure out where they go all by your self, right Red Riding Hood?" there was a grin in her voice and I listened to her standing up. "Sibs is getting everything ready for you so you don't have to spend too much time on everything – it would be best for you if you get that heap fixed within the week. We need you operational."

"There you go with that _we_ stuff again," I grumbled, standing up with practiced ease and pretending to look around. "You still have yet to tell me which _we_ you're talking about."

"Ah-ah-ah, that's need-to-know," Shayne chided, "And you _don't_ need to know." She started walking back into the hangar and I followed, my mind recreating the path I usually took around the carrier to keep me from running into anything. "Back to what I was just saying – you'll receive your first mission in week, and how juicy it is depends on how far you've gotten with the piece of crap you call a gundam."

"Hold on a second," I called after her, stopping suddenly, "How do you know what mission I'll be getting? And why do you sound like you're not going to be around here?"

"Smart girl," I heard her shift up ahead and presumably look in my direction, "Since the Darlian Assassination, my position's changed a little. I need to do a little recon work and figure out what everyone's next move is going to be – talking to the higher-ups would probably be a plan too. Now stop with the bloody questions – I'm your superior for now and I don't need you challenging me at every turn."

"I take orders from no one," I told her hotly.

She laughed bitterly, "That changes today, Red Riding Hood – and lose the sunglasses at night, it's just creepy, mate."

And I heard her walk away, muttering about idiotic kids that didn't know their place.

I was too tired to go after her to argue and my head felt as though someone had just blown it open with a remote detonator. I had left my drugs at St-Gabriel's and the stuff located in the med bay was not even strong enough to heal menstrual cramps, let alone the massive migraines that I suffered from. All I could do for now was put up with it in silence until I could procure some strong painkillers.

Since arriving on the carrier, I slept in Hades cockpit. There were no rooms here for anyone who wasn't a mechanic and if there were, I wasn't about to merit one. A lot of the mechanics resented my presence and I had a feeling one or two of them might have been colonists or at least been on the colonies and recognized me. Sleeping in a hangar is not the most comfortable sleep, nor the most restful – but it was better than nothing.

The next morning Shayne was gone. I knew this not because my sight had returned, but because she usually searched me out and loudly, sometimes physically dragging me out of my suit. Instead of the loud and annoying older girl, Duo had returned and I could hear him doggedly yelling orders to the mechanics who were overseeing the repairs to his suit below.

Before I got ready to jump down and go find him, my fingers brushed against something that hadn't been in there before.

Curious and slightly startled, considering I should have awoken at the slightest indication that there was someone in my suit, I ran my fingers over the flat, rectangular object. Within moments I could tell that the leather-bound object was a book, which confused me even more. Bound books were rare these days, a precious commodity since the world's literature and information had been converted to the internet for preservation and because of the toll they took on the environment. Only someone very rich or very influential could come by a book, especially one such as this. It was old; I could smell the sour mildew of the pages and feel the parched, waxy texture of the insides of the cover. It was hardcover, which was even rarer in books of antiquity.

And then I received the greatest shock of all; as I ran my fingers over the pages in wonder, the tips hit across bumped and raised surfaces – _Braille._

I was so stunned that I pulled back, the book toppling to the floor of my consol.

'Who could…?'

I knew immediately it was Shayne, for the simple reason that no one else could have possibly known about my handicap, other than Heero – and for all I knew, Heero could be dead. I knew that J's people hadn't publicized my blindness, considering if they had I would have had to worry more about people coming after me. So how in the name of whatever power was above us did that girl find out?

Absently I reached down for the book again, running my fingers over the leather cover in amazement; '_Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm.'_

_Children's and House-tales_ by the Grimm brothers. It was even in German.

How can one person just know so much? I was trembling now as I turned the pages, feeling the letters raised up to meet me. I had never owned something like this; just something so normal and childish, but human all at the same time. These were children's stories and fairytales that I had never even bothered to care about learning.

The first page prickled at my fingers as I read them, almost able to see the words in my head: '_Rotkäppchen'._

Little Red Riding Hood.

I almost laughed.

I completely forgot about everything reading the book of fairytales. I was so drawn into them I almost didn't hear Duo calling for me or crawling up the suit to come get me, nearly showing off the Braille fairytale book in the process.

When I finally left the cockpit of Hades and set foot on the floor, I heard him start his way over and half-laughingly, half-bitterly comment, "You're still here?"

I stuck out my tongue in the direction of his voice and pretended to yawn, as though just waking up. "You're still alive?"

He snorted. "Touché – anyway, hurry up and get your gear together. We've got a mission."

I jumped, staring in surprise in his direction. "What?"

"You heard me, kiddo," he said loudly, his footsteps and more silent tones indicating that he was walking away from me. "Recon mission – you and me. Quality time, huh?"

"Don't you mean, which one of us is going to end up dead first?" I yelled back at him.

(-)

The rain and sleet slapped at my already worn face, whipping it raw. I wondered if perhaps my skin wasn't bleeding from the abuse it was receiving from the elements on top of the wounds I'd gotten five days ago when we first arrived in the forested mountain area where we had been stationed.

The Kaidan supplement base was rumored to be under OZ control as well as a current stronghold for certain members of the Dutchner Association. Duo and I had received information that currently a band of guerrilla warriors were laying siege to the place but the battle remained a stalemate. Strategically, Kaidan was not a place of great importance to the organization that we were working for, but they did hold key information as to where other high ranking OZ officials were and we would need them to flush out the rest of the organization.

The plan was for Duo to infiltrate the building and hook bugs into the system, allowing me to hack into it by remote access and gain whatever information we needed to know. He was then to lay the charges that I would detonate from afar. The plan was, in theory, gold.

Except for the fact that we didn't like each other and that I knew from experience how wrong everything could go from one little miscalculation or unprecedented factor.

"Go over it again."

"Come _on_," he groaned at me, looking back through the sleet. His long hair was pulled back and stuffed under his cap to keep it from getting wet, but I knew that the flimsy material was nothing to keep Duo's precious locks safe from the elements. Again a wondered why he didn't just cut his hair, but kept myself from asking – every time he did he gave me a different story anyhow, it wasn't worth the bother.

"Just do it," even though I had always been the slacker, the operative that was less inclined to stick to the mission parameters, Heero's meticulousness had rubbed off on me – apparently so had his surliness, because Duo was glowering and mumbling things about me that didn't sound very friendly at the moment. "Look, do you _want_ to be out here another three hours if this doesn't go as planned? Or if we screw it up, do you want whoever's running the show to send us on an even worse mission? Like black-fly season in Canada?"

He snorted, shaking his head at me and then sighed, "You're annoying, you know that?"

"You're not the first to tell me that – game plan."

"Fine – twenty minutes to hack the computer," he recited impatiently, wrapping his arms around himself to keep warm. Even though we had been provided with clothing and stolen some OZ officers khaki uniforms, we were far from warm. "Thirty-five minutes and twenty-three seconds to lay the charges. Ten minutes to get the hell out of there before you blow them."

I nodded, ignoring his attitude and trying to come up with any scenarios that might end up changing the mission parameters. "With the computers and remote systems bugged, we can return and move at will to sabotage other parts of the complex later. They'll think all we did was try to get rid of the development wing – they shouldn't even check the files for tampering."

Duo grumbled. "I still think it'd be a lot easier to just go in with our suits and serve up some OZ sashimi. The place is going to be swarming with troops once we start blowing things up – and you said _shouldn't_ check, as in there might be a way for them to?"

"You're not listening," I sighed, leaning back against the rock which was digging into my back, "Safeguard one: the charges are a diversion to distract from the real goal. Safeguard two: said charges are being laid all the way across the facility, remember? Safeguard three – I don't need to tell you to leave false entries in case they do check their system, do I?"

I looked up to notice that he was mocking me, fashioning his fingers into a bunch and moving them in time with my lips. I stopped talking and stared at him until he clued into the fact that I'd noticed and put his hands down, grinning sheepishly.

I continued to stare at him for the longest time and then out of nowhere, I don't even remember why I did it, I reached out and struck him. The blow landed on the side of his face because he just managed to move out of the way. He swore and picked himself up, throwing himself at me and before were knew it, the two of us were rolling around on the ground, beating whatever part of the other person that we came in contact with.

Twice we slipped on the mud and rocks and nearly went tumbling down the drop, but it didn't stop either of us. Even though I was the better fighter, he was stubborn, refusing to give in. It was five minutes into our mission plans that we finally came to our senses, glaring at each other, out of breath.

"We have to move quickly," I told him, ignoring the split lip and throbbing bruises on my face.

"Yeah," he nodded, spitting out some blood and what I think was a tooth. He sent me an unimpressed grin. "I'll beat the crap out of you later."

After that mission, we worked better with one another. I don't know if it was because we had assessed each other's abilities and come down with neither of us being a threat or if we had unconsciously worked through the barrier that eight years had created. All I know was that we kind of agreed to disagree. There were nor references to anything that had happened in the past, our "business" relationship was just that; the 'here-and-now' type.

Sometimes Duo came close to talking about what life had been like for him on the streets; he would stop himself before he actually did, as though referring to it might invite questions or cause him to ask me about my past. I still don't know what I would have done if he came straight out and asked me where the hell I'd been after leaving L2.

What I did realize about Duo after a few weeks of living with him and being his unofficial partner was how definitely he had changed since I had last seen him. It was a little scary, considering at first when I'd met up with him he had seemed to be that same person, just older and more mature. But when I watched how he battled or the guarded way that he joked around with the mechanics on Howard's ship, I realized that the little boy I knew from so long ago was dead; a ghost.

What threw people off was his cavalier, laid-back attitude. The disarming smile and wide, innocent looking eyes that made you think upon first impression, 'wow, this guy's really nice' and just taking them for face value. I think I was one of the few people that could look into Duo's eyes, really look and see through the disarming wide-eyed, pseudo smile and understand the complete and utter hatred that broiled beneath their surface. It was enough to give me nightmares and memories of my own half-life, my own incomplete existence.

Sometimes, Duo terrified me. It was just the way he went about his days, easily and calm, collected; sipping a coffee or eating a chocolate bar, singing loud, off-key rock music or playing video games in the rec. room of the carrier, as though there was no war going on outside. He treated it as though it was just another job he had to do. He was able to completely separate his life and feelings towards certain things; almost as though there were two completely different personalities behind the jester's mask. The fun, fake cheerful Duo on the outside and the bitter, horrifying murderer that he became on the battlefield.

Both sides scared me – I didn't understand the jester; the concept of 'having fun' was just a façade to myself, a jargon or verbal cliché I used to try to sound more normal. The murderer was so akin to me, such a parallel and maybe more, considering he had lost so much, that I shivered to think what might happen if this boy ever became my enemy – a feat that considering the war we fought, could happen at any second, whenever the puppeteers pulling our strings decided on whim to change us.

Maybe he sensed my uncertainty or my recoil, because after a while he started approaching me more, treating me like more than a mission partner. I'm not saying our relationship went beyond that, but he had me participating in activities that couldn't even be linked to our missions. He called it 'being pals'. I called it nerve racking.

It was exactly the case of him coercing me into playing card games with him or his virtual games. He would say that he was bored and demand that I entertain him or keep him occupied. I knew he was stubborn and would probably keep on at me until he got his way and usually gave in almost immediately, unless I was busy with Hades or the one time that I experienced a particularly nasty blind spell. I told him I had a massive migraine and couldn't go into the light, which was partially the truth - he gloated at me the entire week about how he hadn't been sick a day in his life.

Eventually, though, I began playing the games by myself, when I wasn't reading the book of Fairy Tales that Shayne had left me. The first story I read had been about Little Red Riding Hood, of course – I finally understood why Shayne constantly called me that. Other than that, though, the story had little resemblance to my life and I found it boring and dull. I did, however, like the stories of Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Ravens. The idea of the down-trodden or bewitched girl making it through and showing the world appealed to me. I didn't take to the romance though, finding it silly and stupid. Obviously these stories had been written centuries ago in a time where something like 'love' still existed.

If there were love in our world, there would never have been any war, I decided. And I would never have been put through everything I had lived through so far.

"New mission."

"Uh huh," I replied, squinting at the petite view screen that displayed a turbo-modified race car burning up the track. My fingers whizzed over the controls, intent on finding the perfect rhythm to make the on-screen car go faster without jeopardizing precision and path, twisting the joy-stick in various directions as I did. I was a seconds away from beating Duo's high score.

The view screen switched off.

"What the hell!" I demanded, looking up. Duo stood near the view screen, holding the socket-plug in his hands and smirking at me with amusement.

"It's for you."

I glared and he handed me over a portable view-screen, which I grabbed rather jerkily and stared down at. For a moment I couldn't make out the flurry of neon-green code running past my eyes. After taking a moment to make my brain stop focusing on car games and on the fate of the war, the message became clear.

'_Infiltrate Alliance Production Facility._ _Copy all data located on mainframe. Terminate facility."_

A bunch of co-ordinates and provisos were located underneath, but I ignored them for the moment. Looking up at Duo angrily, I demanded, "What kind of shitty, girl-guide mission is that?"

"One that they want you to do, obviously," Duo smirked. "What? They got you cleaning toilets, little girl?"

"Better than kissing ass, little boy," I shot back. "I'm going to need a plane. Possibly a speeder, if you've got one."

"Hey, you helped to steal my parts, what makes you think I'm going to lend you a plane too?"

"Because you're a nice person and if you don't I'll kill you and take it anyway?"

"Sure, go ahead and try."

"I'm not kidding."

"Neither am I."

We stared at each other, long and hard.

"I'll go get the plane for you," he said with a sigh.

"Great – I'm going to go take a shower."

He paused in front of the door, turned and looked at me incredulously. "Isn't there some kind of defeating purpose in showering before a mission?"

"Are you joking?" I asked wryly, "According to Shayne, there's an entire force of OZ that can tell there's a spy around based on scent."

He snorted.

"Hope you didn't use all of the cold water," I said lightly, more of a jest than anything else as I headed in the direction of the showers.

"I didn't. But I did use the three minutes of lukewarm water the malfunctioning water heater around here produces."

I winced. "Jerk."

(-)

I felt like killing whoever had sent the mission by the time I got back to the hanger. The mission she'd sent me on had posed no danger, other than the fact he'd known it was a nuclear facility and I'd almost actually blown it up. I mean, I was all for colonial independence and stuff like that, but causing a nuclear war while we were in the middle of an arms war was not something on my mind. In the end, all I did was slip in undetected, make a copy of the relevant information and send the missiles packing on a one-way trip to the middle of the ocean.

"Bastards…gonna give 'em a piece of my mind," I snarled as I jumped out of the cockpit of the plane and landed on hard ground. The engineers sent me weird glances but I ignored them as I approached my suit. Duo's voice interrupted me and he lifted himself downward on the cable-lift.

"New parts arrived while you were gone. I took the liberty of helping you out a bit," he grinned. "Even though technically you already stole from me…"

"Shut up, Maxwell, I have people maim and destroy," I replied, yanking the cable out of his hand and letting myself be lifted up towards the cockpit.

"A 'thank you' would have been enough!" he called up after me, before muttering something under his breath and disappearing back into the hanger.

In reality, I was extremely grateful to Duo, but at the moment, the rebel alliances were annoying me. Did they think that because I wasn't part of the original mission that they could trick me into doing their dirty work and then claiming they had no relationship to me? I didn't know anyone who was in on it, other than Shayne, and she didn't seem like the type to send me on a nuclear war inducing mission just for money. Maybe send me off as a sacrifice for money, but never anything that would kill more people than myself.

The only person I could even think of that might have had something to do with the mission was Dr. J, however far behind me I had thought his influence had been. Although I couldn't reach him directly, I sent a rather colorful message as well as a few specifically chosen computer viruses to keep his hands full for a few hours.

I didn't see Duo for the rest of the day, and fell asleep in my console at around two-thirty the next morning, only to be awoken at five with an incessant beeping surrounding me. It looked as though J had managed to debug the system and tried to send me a reciprocal virus.

The next mission that I was sent on stands out in my mind, not only because it was the last mission before disaster reared its ugly head, but because it was the first time I was reunited with Heero again after helping him steal the parts to Duo's Gundam. The target was an OZ supplies base in the North Pacific, a large facility that exported to most of the other small bases on the coast.

It was also the first time that I was expected to take up the flight controls of my second-rate gundam as though I was part of the group. Hades was not yet a work of art, still showing tell-tale signs of attack, but her parts were newer and the repairmen and mechanics working on her made the work load lighter and better. Duo had convinced some of his guys to take a look or two at my suit when I wasn't around, and although I pretended to hate the idea of someone messing around with my suit, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the help and thankful for the added safety these mechanics provided me with.

I arrived at the base, and was immediately met with resistance from the Leo corps that was on patrol. They opened fire immediately, and I pulled out Hades' thermal triton, watching with a grim smirk as the thermal fire exploded from the outlets.

I readied myself into an attack stance, the thermal fire blackening the ground beneath me. The Leos kept coming, the shots from their rifles not even making dents in Hades despite their growing proximity. With a few commands and flicks of the clutch, Hades was gliding at breakneck speed above the ground, jamming the trident through the first Leo and ripping through the side of it to catch the one nearby, the explosion of metal and electronics lighting up the screen shield before me. I could hear screams of pain and terror as the pilots of the other suits went to their deaths in a fiery blaze.

My hand trembled only slightly as I flicked off my com-link and continued to sweep the place free of the attacking Leos, the screech of metal being ripped apart the only sound in my ears. Smoke and sulfer were in the air, permeating their way through my battered Gundam. The air-pressure system was damaged, I thought absently. I'd have to fix it before we went into space again.

If we went into space again, I reminded myself.

The last Leo tried to self-destruct and bring me down with it, but the explosive heat only singed the outer coverings. The fool's coward sacrifice hadn't done anything to help his cause.

I looked up suddenly, hearing the approaching roar of an engine. Through the rising smoke I squinted and saw the familiar shape of the Wing Gundam, its beam saber ready for battle. I flicked my com-link back on.

"What the hell are you doing here? This is my mission!"

Static. A pause. Then,

"Negative. I was instructed to act as back-up for this mission."

Heero's cold, no-nonsense voice made me boil over in anger and I slammed my fists down on the console.

"Damn it, I will never be a good enough operative for anyone to leave me alone, will I?" I yelled at him. "I could have done this on my own!"

"Hey, I guess we're on the same mission," another voice on the com-link said and I realized that Duo had appeared and had both Heero and I on wide-beam com. He had appeared quickly and silently and probably had been able to hear my little outburst, much to my dismay at not being able to sense anything on the radar. "You could have waited up for me."

"Fucking hyper jammers," I muttered. "I didn't see you, so I should have known you were there, Duo…"

"Nice hardware," he appeared suddenly on the small view-screen in the corner of my window. He grinned. "What? Don't want to say hello to an old buddy?"

He swung his long beam scythe, destroying an enemy mobile suit. His style was not unlike my own with his sweeping strokes, although I it was just that. I usually had to jab my trident through the enemy, while he made nice, clean arcs.

A sudden volley of fire began again and it looked as though the OZ forces had sent out all their standby mobile suits. Heero jetted forward, making quick work of them with his beam saber, although his thrusts and parries were obviously analytically thought out. As soon as all suits were completely terminated, he turned to Deathscythe. Wing seemed to stop for a moment in a contemplative way.

"Hey, man!" Duo's voice was full of teasing, prodding humor.

"Target: Lock on," we both heard Heero muttered, and Wing was suddenly aiming at Deathscythe. Duo did a double take and then shrugged. The view screen disappeared.

"So, we have to fight this out after all!" he said, grim determination edging through his voice.

"Oh, would you two just whip 'em out already?" I rolled my eyes and backed Hades away from the two other Gundams. "You've been like this since you met, what is it, a guy thing?" There was no answer. "I get dibs on the winner," I grumbled finally. I suddenly noticed a stealthily approaching mobile suit. "Duo, watch ou---!"

What I was about to say was cut off at the sound of an explosion as Heero fired. Duo began to freak out verbally, thinking that Heero was targeting him, but when the mobile suit behind him fell over, he calmed down a little.

"Now we're even," Heero said flatly, and then, to the surprise of everyone, began to laugh out loud in a maniacal cackle. Wing suddenly shot into the air and transformed into its fighter mode, disappearing into the clouds.

"Damn, you got me!" Duo cried.

"I hate when he does that." I pulled Hades back, pulling my trident back into its safety hatch behind me. "Show off. Always thinks he's better than everyone else…friggen icicle…"

"Are you talking to yourself, Squirt?"

"Stop calling me that!"

---------------------------

--------------------------))

Eh, this chapter angered me. I am also currently in a bad mood and don't care about the crappiness. Tomorrow when I regain my interest in humanity and the lovely world of grammar, syntax and good storylines I might fix it.

Then again, the way things are going, maybe not.

KQ


End file.
